This is a CTP of initiative: RIPESS/ APRES‐GE (Switzerland)
Created in September 2016, the "Demain Genève" association is a "network of networks" organized around the transition idea. More precisely, its main objectives are to gather regional project promoters and regional organizations in favour of another economy, to promote existing local initiatives and to attract people not involved yet in transition and/or increase their level of engagement. The main idea is to federate, along with APRES-GE members, other close movements such as benefit corporations (ie. for-profit corporate entities that include positive impact on society, workers, the community and the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals) or transition initiatives which do not identify themselves as part of the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) movement explicitly but remain close to it. As the interviewee explains: "Transition is a federative concept and transition actors are all parts somehow of the SSE movement".
This federative concept might explain the instant success of the platform: "In less than 3 weeks [after the creation], we had 15 people around the table, representing networks of about 500 or 600 enterprises. We managed to federate not only the Chamber and its members, but also peripheral networks which gather social entrepreunarial projects as well as enterprises which really engage in a sustainable development approach". "Demain Genève" will act as a platform for several kinds of actors already and potentially involved in the transition process, in order to foster exchange of good practices and make them visible to the public.
In order to bring visibility and be able to monitor existing transition initiatives in the Geneva area, several projects are underway: the website will serve as a database for existing and future initiatives; a documentary, thought as a local version of "Tomorrow", will be produced; various kinds of events will be organized in order to strengthen the human relations between transition pioneers and Geneva inhabitants.
Similarly to the beginnings of APRES-GE, the idea of "Demain Genève" initially came from two men that had watched the movie "Demain" few months before and wanted to ride this wave of success. One was the co-founder of APRES-GE and the other one was a social entrepreneur at the head of one of the few public limited companies members of the Chamber. Convinced by the necessity to apply sustainable development principles to its organization (specialized on insurance, risk and human resources advice and management for enterprises), this social entrepreneur had been a member of the Chamber since 2014 in order to create links between SSE and market economy.
As the interviewee explains, "I found myself with an extremely innovative and vivid social entrepreneur who told me that we should federate around us a number of people willing to highlight existing projects within a dynamic process of transition towards a sustainable economy". This collaboration was greatly facilitated by the fact that the canton of Geneva is a rather limited spatial territory, with less than 500 000 inhabitants: this proximity implies that most actors involved in sustainable development issues already know each other, which can be a factor success when it comes down to building a network such as "Demain Genève", which is meant to be very regional in essence. Moreover, several transition initiatives already existed, they just needed some visibility and a platform allowing them to exchange experiences and develop competences.
The interviewee explained that internal dynamics intervened and helped the CTP to happen. When APRES-GE was approached, it was at the same time leading an internal dialogue on a strategic re-orientation : in particular, they were considering the possibility to include transition as a leading concept, in order to adopt a new framing according to which the SEE movement could be considered, to some extent, as a pioneer of the transition initiatives. This might explain why its members were highly receptive to the idea of launching a network based on the transition concept.
Regarding financial support, "Demain Genève" members are currently looking at external funding possibilities: along with the support of private foundations, they intend to rely on crowd-funding opportunities (in particular for the movie they intend to do). Even though public financing is not dismissed out of hand, the interviewee recognizes that they should pay attention not to place themselves in a financial dependency situation towards one institution anymore.
The creation of "Demain Geneve" was preceded by three related events: first, the quest for repositioning of the Chamber in terms of transition which helps to understand why the Chamber was so keen to develop a new transition platform; second, the release of "Tomorrow", a movie characterized not only by its cinematographic success but also by its societal impact (outside movie theatres), that also acted as an incentive to make Geneva transition initiatives more visible ; third, the significant loss of financing at the same time, which corresponds to another CTP and which is detailed elsewhere.
In June 2015, two members of the board of the Chamber (responsible for its strategic steering) wrote an opinion column entitled "Which economy for the transition?"). This opinion was considered important because it set the ground for a future re-orientation of the Chamber that would become hugely needed few months later when it lost a major source of funding. By acknowledging the fact that SSE, as defined in Switzerland, has always not only respected sustainable development principles but also put them into practice through its core values (limited profits, workers' participation, general interest etc.), the authors wanted to show how the SSE model could become a major player in the transition process. More particularly, they wanted to highlight how the SSE business model fits perfectly in the transition model.
The transition idea became even more popular with the release of the movie "Tomorrow", which came out in Swiss theatres in December 2015 and became an instant success, as it had been already the case in France. In this movie, the directors present a series of local alternative solutions regarding comprehensive topics such as energy, transport, economy, agriculture, education and democracy. Even though most presented solutions had been existed for years, the positive stance stating that everyone can do a bit could help explaining the impact it had on the development of similar initiatives, including in Switzerland. The demand for communal gardens, energy cooperatives and alternative currencies has exploded during the months following the release of the movie. Given the obvious links with the SEE movement, this success convinced the members of APRES-GE of the relevance of their repositioning in terms of transition. Moreover, they were inspired by its financing method, which relied partly on crowd-funding (the directors managed to raise around 440 000€ by this means). The members of APRES-GE, which had recently lost a public subsidy of roughly the same amount, decided to resort to participative financing, in an attempt to stop relying on subsidies which could suddenly disappear.
Because of the novelty of "Demain Genève" (which has not even properly started its activities yet), no contestation as such has risen for the moment. However, some issues related to the inclusive approach taken by the platform, which could gain prominence over the years, have been raised.
First of all, the idea to gather several kinds of entities, organizations with very different targets and guiding objectives into the same platform organized around the transition process, could be tricky to manage at some point. Especially, the suspicion between radically different kind of profiles (ie. activists and entrepreneurs) has to be overcome: "There is a tension, which also exists in France, between solidarity economy activists (or social change activists) and the entrepreneurs. It is clear that they are suspicious of each other: some entrepreneurs tend to think that militants talk a lot without doing much, while some militants see entrepreneurs as opportunists". This potential source of conflicts has not affected "Demain Genève" yet because, for the moment, the platform does not include ideology-driven activists: "What made things easier for us, and allowed us to go quickly, was the absence of "old" activist. By "old" activists, I mean those we can find in most of social innovation networks, who are really into ideologies, principles, values and who do not necessarily act on it".
As a matter of fact, the entrepreunarial spirit seems to have gotten ahead of the activist spirit: "There is kind of a hidden agenda, since there are essentially people with a social entrepreneurship spirit in the current group. They are engaged in developing and producing goods and services with a high social and ecological commitment [...] and they share the idea according to which the economy should be changed by the economy [...]. The hidden agenda could consist in developing and strengthening those enterprises and ensuring that progressively more and more enterprises become sustainable [...] The idea is to take, step by step, the place of non-sustainable enterprises".
The creation of "Demain Genève" is currently considered as a turning point because it has the potential to federate and reach agents committed to social transformation, and especially young people: "The main challenge regarding transformation is to be able to attract the new and emerging forms of commitments. My colleagues of "Demain Genève" and myself are really convinced that, with this kind of initiatives, we are going to be able to mobilize citizens already involved in traditional activities. By helping them with the marketing of the traditional products they sell (such as goat cheese) or for the development of solidarity-based savings, we intend to increase their will to build a transition economy". In other words, they intend to attract more members by helping them to develop their competences, being for writing business plans, strengthening their position on the market and/or helping them to reach consumers. By giving them the support they need and offering several services, the platform aims at being a recognized key player among transition initiators.
What remains unclear though is to know if the transition concept, which is very inclusive at the moment, will stand the test of time and manage to federate a great number of actors from different sectors of the economy. Given the very recent creation of "Demain Genève", the interviewee recognizes that it can be premature to make long-term plans. However, if the ride of success continues, it could end up in reformulating the role of the platform, and making a clear divide between APRES-GE and "Demain Genève". As he explains, "Today, the federative dynamic that the Chamber has lost has been taken over by 'Demain Genève'. However, these 2 things are so close that I think that we are going to redefine the role of the platform in one or two years: the Chamber will probably remain with a specific role for the organizations that recognize themselves in the ESS (including newcomers) while 'Demain Genève' will be a larger platform, with a separate logic compared with the economic Chamber".
Since "Demain Genève" is pretty new, it would be premature to try to draw lessons from its few months- existence. However, what is striking is that a lot of lessons were learnt based on APRES-GE experience and will certainly act as steering principles for the new transition platform.
The first lesson would be to acknowledge the fact that, in the current social and economic context, the first change lever is economic in nature, rather than political. As the interviewee explains, "Of course we need to question the political aspect of what we're doing, but these questions have to enrich the entrepreneurial activity, rather than making it more difficult". This posture, which was the one taken by APRES-GE founders at its beginning has to be central to the development of "Demain Genève", according to the interviewee:"What is interesting is that I have the feeling that we are returning to the dynamic path of the Chamber when it was founded 12 years ago with a posture and a vision that we had lost somewhere".
Another lesson is that the network should always try to pay attention to the needs of its members. As the interviewee explains "When you are in a social movement perspective or a transformative network, you always have to think about what makes people participate [...] The first lesson is to keep an eye on the level of mobilization and involvement of stakeholders as a whole". This includes paying attention to what members want from the platform, in order to avoid a growing discrepancy between their demands and what they're offered. In APRES-GE history, there was a point when such a discrepancy between supply and demand led to an internal crisis.
A third lesson would be to be pay great attention to avoid being dependent on one or very few persons for the functioning of the platform. As the interviewee explains, "We really have to be very careful, in our governance structure, not to be too much dependent on few individuals when it comes down to lead the platform because when they leave, they are difficult to replace ". This observation is made in reference to the departure of the 1st General Secretary of APRES-GE in 2012 which led to the difficulty to replace him with someone with the same amount of skills and ultimately led to the necessity to split the Chambers in three poles in order to redistribute the responsibilities.
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