Dear Colleagues. Warm greetings form ESSET.
I would like to take this opportunity to present to you the attached report on Solidarity Finance. Between 2010 and 2011, ESSET hosted consultative meeting with the Informal Traders from SADC with the aim to find out what are the challenges facing the Informal Traders in the daily work? >From the 5th to the 7th of October, 2010, church representatives from five SADC countries, namely, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland and Zambia, met in Johannesburg for a dialogue on justice and informal trade. One of the main concerns of the dialogue was the ways in which informal traders in the region are being excluded from formal financial institutions and government-subsidized financial support opportunities in countries where they exist, such as South Africa. Their lack of financial support given its hugely harmful effect on productivity and earnings and therefore the livelihoods of informal traders is one of the biggest challenges facing them. To understand the magnitude of this challenge it is important to shed light on the state of the informal trading sector in Africa and the macroeconomic philosophy that underpins the operations and practices of the formal financial sector. ESSET then organized a study visit to Brazil in July 2011. A delegation of four people from Southern Africa was sent by ESSET to Brazil for a study visit. The delegation consisted of two women informal traders representing traders from Lesotho and South Africa respectively an a researcher form Namibia and a ESSET staff member. The main aim of the study was to learn about different forms of Solidarity Economy that take in cognisance of presence and existence of Informal trading. The attached report on this email entails summarized version of the findings made in Brazil and other areas where the concept of Solidarity Economy is a way of living especially in Latin America. Your inputs on this report will be highly appreciated and they will inform the innovative ways on how to explore this concept in relation to our African context. I hope you find the contents of this report interesting to be further explored. It also advisable that for those of you who belong to structures or organizations use this report to debates or dialogues to get what other people are thinking of this concept and how we try to explore it further?; and as stated above your feed back will be very helpful. Thank you. Kind regards. Yours in struggle for social justice. *Mandla HK Mndebele - ESSET Programme Assistant* *Telephone: +2711 833 1190* *Fax: +2711 833 1076* *Mobile: +2779 095 3493* *Email: [email protected] **/ **[email protected] * -- *"BECAUSE HE LIVES, I LIVE TOO !!!"* -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
