Like every year, ESS Month will take place throughout the month of November. In this context, events are organized throughout the country throughout the month to raise awareness of the social and solidarity economy.
On the occasion of the official opening of this ESS Month, organized on November 4 at the headquarters of the VYV Mutualist Group in Paris, ESS France revealed the winners of the 2024 ESS Awards, which aim to discover and promote initiatives remarkable features of the movement. Of the 565 applications received for these awards in 2024, 15 initiatives were rewarded in the region, under the leadership of the regional chambers of the ESS. The two national winners were chosen by a jury which examined 28 applications selected by the different regions.
SNL-Prologues, solidarity real estate company serving vulnerable groups
In the “Social Utility” category, the SNL-Prologues initiative is rewarded this year. This is a solidarity property company approved by the State, operating in the form of a cooperative in the Social Economy Union. This cooperative, which brings together housing integration associations and solidarity investors, aims to acquire housing which is renovated and offered to precarious populations, in particular people who are homeless or living in very degraded housing.
Thanks to these acquisitions, SNL (New Solidarities for Housing) houses 3,500 people, including 1,400 children. « Our tenants are 40% single-parent families », Specifies Vanina Mercury, president SNL-Prologues. “ We offer them dignified housing, well located, with very low rents. “, she emphasizes. SNL also supports teams of volunteers responsible for promoting the proper inclusion of tenants in the neighborhood.
The system is partly financed by public funds (State and communities) as well as by loans from the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, and partly by the support of individuals, solidarity investors, “ who buy shares in the solidarity property company, accepting a moderate financial return but a significant social return », underlines Vanina Mercury.
Also read: THE CAREER – By the way, what is a solidarity property company?
Shared farms, an activity and employment cooperative serving agro-ecology
In the “Ecological Transition” category, the 2024 ESS Prize is awarded to the activity and employment cooperative (CAE) Les Fermes Partées. Created in the form of a cooperative society of collective interest (Scic), this structure supports the emergence, development and sustainability of collective and participatory farms in agroecology.
« The agricultural sector is both the second sector of activity that emits the most greenhouse gases and one of the main victims of climate change.notes Céline Riolo, co-director of the Scic. We must react to this and promote collective agricultural models, which make it possible to experiment, create mutual aid networks, ensure social protection for farmers, but also diversify production activitieswhich represents an advantage in the face of climatic hazards. »
It is also a question of responding to the decline in attractiveness of the farming profession and the gradual disappearance of agricultural operations. “ Out of 400,000 farms in France, we lose 10,000 each year, explains Céline Riolo. Faced with this, we want to create living, open farms in the middle of the village, living spaces connected with their territory. » She regrets, however, that this cooperative model is not eligible for certain subsidies, because it is poorly recognized by the public authorities, forcing structures to undergo complex legal arrangements in order to be eligible.
Lucas Théodose, farmer member of one of the cooperatives associated with Shared Farms, the collective farm La Clef des sables, in Saint-Lattier (Isère), testifies: “ In 2020, we took over a farm of around forty hectares from nine farmers whose owner was retiring. The cooperative form allowed us a lower capital contribution from each of us – around 20,000 euros each, whereas we could easily have to pay 500,000 euros to take over a farm under a traditional format – and to create nine jobs at instead of one, in the form of an employee, and to allow each of us, by organizing ourselves, to dedicate time to something other than agricultural activity, in particular to be able to take leave, but also to devote time to advocacy in favor of our model or union activism. »
Camille Dorival 
