Commonfare - the European research-action project aimed at promoting social cooperation as a response to the growing conditions of precariousness - gets to the final stage after three intense years of meetings, debates, research and collaborations scattered throughout Europe and expressed through commonfare.net. At the beginning of the last month of project activities, we celebrated the final conference, organized in Trento in collaboration with OltrEconomia Festival. The partnership with the OltrEconomia Festival has given life to the experimentation of the Oltrino, the complementary digital currency developed by Commonfare as a concrete attempt to promote a new socio-economic model capable of favoring access to common goods and wealth of services.

The experimentation of the Oltrino has been successful, able to break the record of participation in the history of the Festival. For us, researchers in Commonfare, the Oltrino represents another example of virtuous collaboration between different knowledges and sensibilities that see research as a way to build sustainable forms of living together.

The final stage of the Commonfare project marks the birth of the Commonfare Association, which will allow commonfare.net to grow and remain operational through the contribution of the Commoners. Aware that the values, objectives and solutions identified through the three-year project represent a heritage to be supported with care and attention, the Commonfare association will pursue the following goals:

These objectives are placed in the wake of the social and financial sustainability that the Commonfare Association intends to pursue. By facilitating the participation to forms of exchange and cooperation, in fact, commonfare.net contributes to nurturing the principle of social cohesion, thus the construction of long-term sustainable social relations. With its functionalities, commonfare.net provides people with an experience of cooperation and exchange in which everyone holds the same starting opportunities, reducing social disparities and highlighting the strength of cooperation. 

On the other hand, the Commonfare Association is grounded in the terrain of relationships and skills of all its founding members and the Commoners, who are committed to finding a balance between human and financial resources from here on, as happened during the design of commonfare.net. From this point of view, the Association intends to continue the work carried out during the Commonfare project within a medium-term dimension, aware that the platform will have to change in order not to risk obsolescence, therefore moving to a full grassroots management by the Commoners.

The choice to take this path thus guarantees the continuation of the existing relationships, reflecting the values - solidarity, cooperation, mutualism, autonomy, care - that inspire Commonfare.