Seoul mayor’s trip to Europe focuses on social enterprise, cooperatives

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon on Monday met with leaders of social business and cooperatives in Barcelona, Spain, the first leg of his seven-day trip to Europe.

He met with Sandro Rosell, chairman of FC Barcelona, a football club, and the club’s vice president Carles Vilarrubi to share management skills of the football club, which is run in the form of a cooperative.

The football club, which Lionell Messi plays for, has more than 170,000 investors and is owned by 1,343 fan clubs. The chairman and the board of directors are chosen by the cooperative members. 

Through the meeting with the executives of the club, Park learned how the football club holds a general meeting with the large number of the cooperative members in a democratic way and satisfies their needs, the city said.

Seoul City announced the vision of Seoul as a cooperative city in July and set a goal to make the city grow based on values and results of cooperation.

The city plans to encourage participation of citizens into cooperatives, create funds and set rules to promote cooperatives.

The act of cooperative will come into force on Dec. 1.

“Cooperatives and social firms are efficient models which can create economic values, welfare and jobs all at the same time,” said Mayor Park in a press statement.

Seoul Mayor also visited ESADE Business School which is working to nurture social enterprises in coordination with BBVA, the second-largest bank in Spain.

They run ESADE Momentum Project which picks 10 social enterprises each year to support.

Seoul plans to organize a 100 billion won ($9.3 million) fund, half financed by the city and the other half by the private sector, to prepare a socio-economic infrastructure. With the fund the city will loan firms run by women, the disabled and social businesses.

Mayor Park also participated in a general assembly meeting of World e-Governments Organization of Cities and Local Governments (WeGo) Tuesday. WeGo is an international cooperative body for cities and local governments committed to sustainable city development by fostering collaborations among e-governing cities.

He will also visit Bologna, northern Italy, where he is scheduled to visit successful cooperatives such as LegaCoop, the largest cooperative in the nation.

On the last day of his trip next Monday, he is to visit Paris, France, and meet up with Jean-Marc Borello, a founder of social enterprise SOS Group to discuss ways to coordinate in social renovation.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)