Social Solidarity Economy

How can you talk about podcasts while making a podcast? What is time and what does it mean to lose it? Can technology help us to make up for the lost time? Is there really lost and won time? During the event entitled “I'm always running and I can't catch up”, Maro Pantazidou and Antonis Faras talked about the lack of free time, exhausting working rates, anxiety deriving from time that goes by and also about technology as social and political issues, and they recorded their discussion, creating a new live podcast.

A different tour of the western side of Thessaloniki was made by young people from all over Europe who came to Greece to participate in the 8th Congress of Young Europeans organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Thessaloniki office, on 19-22 October 2023. The participants of the tour saw parts of the city through the eyes of cooperative Social Solidarity Economy and neighbourhood initiatives that sprang up during the crisis as a collective effort to meet needs in a participatory and democratic way of decision making.

The dominant narrative is that technology forms an independent and self-sustaining force that we must inevitably accept as it is. On the contrary, the researcher Christos Giotitsas underlines in his article that technology is a social construction and that we have the means to transform it according to our needs. This is precisely what open technologies, digital commons and the emerging movement of ‘cosmolocalism’ intend to do. All these take on practical forms in agricultural activities in the Epirus region of Greece. 

The “Souroukia of Rapsani” is a group of people who come from the village or live and work there most of the time, being the first to face the challenges of the place. People who, with their example, knowledge, and skills, but also with their community and cooperative spirit, provide inspiration on how the revitalization of shrinking areas can be achieved. 

A conversation with the mayor of Tempi, Georgos Manolis, on the problems of the municipality that hinder the development and revitalisation of its decentralised areas, such as Rapsani. The main issue is the lack of infrastructure in terms of transport, internet, hospitality, and teleworking spaces, as well as the lack of financial resources. Here are some initial proposals on our part to address the challenges.