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As one of the first cooperatives of entrepreneurs (Cooperative d’activité et d’emploi), Oxalis Scop has been a pioneer in new ways of cooperation among entrepreneurs and in the support and development of Social Economy in France.
Founded in 1997, Oxalis is a socially innovative project: a shared company, an incubator, a co-working space, an accelerator, a start-up, a network, among many other things.
All 250 entrepreneurs benefit from the support of a management and financial team (always looking to implement new organizational methods) and simultaneously are able to develop their own professional activity. This gives them the option of working individually or in a collective project if they choose to do it. An important percentage of the entrepreneurs are also associates which allows them to be an integral part of the decision making process of the cooperative which is based on democracy and participation.
The entrepreneurs carry professional activities, which require expertise, specific skills and specialized knowledge. Although, each member had a different journey before joining Oxalis, all chose to be part of the project because they want to “work differently”, share core values (gender equality, fair economy,…) and believe that it provides them more career opportunities, more stability and job protection.
In recent years, the cooperative has expanded its cooperation beyond the French territory and has taken part in multiple European cooperation projects (e.g. Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs, EDEA, EMBRACE), most of them focused on some of Oxalis’ areas of expertise: entrepreneurship, social economy, social entrepreneurship and social innovation. These experiences have allowed Oxalis to learn more about Social Economy in Europe and create new bonds with other social economy actors.
Oxalis together with other participants in the ASIS project.Today, Oxalis is co-coordinator of the project “Alpine Social Innovation Strategy” (ASIS) financed by the programme INTERREG Alpine Space. ASIS aims to develop and promote Social Innovation as a new vision of innovation in the Alpine space area. All this with the objective of increasing the innovation capacity of Alpine space regions and provide a better answer to economic and societal challenges met by the alpine countries. The project has 10 partners coming from Austria, Germany, Italy, Slovenia & France. During its run is has produced different tools and material to better understand social innovation in the area, such as, the Social Innovation Strategy Platform Social Innovation Strategy Platform, which aims to bring together the community of social innovators and social innovation stakeholders in the area.
More about Oxalis on: www.oxalis-scop.fr
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