The Association of Korean Local Governments for Social Economy and Solidarity (SSEGOV) is a membership-based network of local governments headquartered in Seoul, which seek to solve social problems and to increase the sustainability of local economies through social and solidarity economy. SSEGOV was established in 2013, based on Local Autonomy Act. Its mission is to benefit local communities through the social economy and to develop a cooperative network among municipal governments to boost the local economy. SSEGOV currently has 48 members (local governments), who are leading social economy initiatives across Korea. Most of the member cities are large municipalities and undertake social economy policies, in order to create jobs and regenerate local communities by supporting social economy organizations such as social enterprises or cooperatives. The total population of these cities is more than 13 million. SSEGOV focuses on networking and mobilizing resources for local governments to tackle social problems collectively.
The core businesses to foster the social economy of SSEGOV are:
- Facilitating and supporting capacity building in local government for the social economy;
- Raising awareness of the community to increase participation in the sector;
- Improving the institutional environment by collaborating with legislators;
- Enabling the social enterprises to provide innovative services for the public sector;
- Building a strong network with key stakeholders across the sectors to develop more effective social innovation policy initiatives
SSEGOV promotes the social economy as a new vehicle of regional development and provides networking and learning opportunities for its members. All of our programs aim to serve the public interest by building the capacity of local governments and by increasing the resource flow to the social economy sector. The incumbent president of SSEGOV is Mr. CHONG Won O, mayor of Seongdong-gu, and seven other mayors serve as the executive board. Two metropolitan mayors (Seoul, Daegu) and four governors (Gyeonggi, Gangwon, Gyeongnam, Jeju) also support the SSEGOV as senior advisors.