Special Report: TOGETHER - Enriching public action with co-responsibility

There was a founding act behind the TOGETHER project and the co-responsibility initiatives taken by Mulhouse: the new social cohesion strategy promoted by the Council of Europe in 2005. With it came a novel vision of social inclusion, now defined as a society's capacity to ensure the well-being of all, including future generations, via co-responsibility.

When, in the same year, the Council of Europe presented its "Methodological Guide on Concerted Development of Social Cohesion Indicators", the city of Mulhouse volunteered to experiment using the co-responsibility approach. "The idea that well-being for all by all should become an objective for territories was totally in phase with the social innovation path the city had chosen, particularly through the cooperative bodies set up with inhabitants as early at 1990," explains Sébastien Houssin, "Mulhouse, A City of Co-responsibility" project leader with the Department for Territorial Action.

Mulhouse, testing co-responsibility

Since 2006, the city of Mulhouse has launched ten co-responsibility pilot initiatives with a very concrete objective: moving towards greater well-being by working together to improve well-being indicators. The pilot initiatives, initially focused on the issue of social inclusion, have since opened to other related areas of application (health, education, consumption) and to specific environments (businesses, public institutions). As they have progressed, they have also increased to the scale of a neighbourhood and to a greater number of stakeholders (public bodies and their representatives, businesses, associations, inhabitants, etc.).

"One of the first lessons we learned from our co-responsibility initiatives," explains Sébastien Houssin, "is that there are a huge number of dimensions to take into account in order to move towards well-being. Even on the scale of a limited space such as a school, for example, concerns go well beyond the relations between students and teachers. They also touch on conviviality, the relations with parents, the quality of the infrastructure, the teaching rhythms, etc."

"One of the prerequisites for there to be a real feeling of co-responsibility is that the citizens must be able to take on an active role, which also implies that institutions need to change their perspective," emphasises Stéphanie Ducreaux, who is in charge of communication for the TOGETHER project. "This work has to be done for each action. That, for example, worked very well for the pilot initiative called 'Multi-party Social Contract': a peer-to-peer social dialogue was established between the public authorities and the beneficiaries of the RSA active solidarity social benefit [a social benefit going to people with limited income] in which each party was able to define its responsibilities and commitments. Afterwards, yesterday’' beneficiaries had become project leaders totally involved in their social integration."

Well-being indicators as the basis for action plans

The eight-step methodology proposed by the Council of Europe was applied and adapted to each of the pilot initiatives (collecting well-being criteria, summaries, building indicators, measuring, etc.). Prior to defining action plans and measuring progress, jointly building well-being indicators is a key step in the approach to co-responsibility: "Using what inhabitants express, we manage to build indicators that are comprehensible and usable by all, in addition to analyses that are shared by both the citizens and the other stakeholders," says Sébastien Houssin.

TOGETHER: improving the methodology

One of the objectives of the URBACT TOGETHER project, which was launched at the end of 2009, is to refine the methodology that was initially proposed by the Council of Europe. "The experience of Braine l'Alleud and the cities in the Wallonia Region, which opted for multiple-choice indicators, enabled us to improve how we formulated our questionnaires, among other things," Sébastien Houssin explains.

Comparing with other experiences could also be beneficial for resolving major challenges that remain. These include, for example, the difficulty of transposing a methodology on the scale of a neighbourhood "due to the diversity of targeted groups involved and of the issues to treat," says Stéphanie Ducreux. The innovated nature of co-responsibility also brings into question the governance system in place in European countries. "When one enters into the action phase, one also measures that it is rather difficult for public authorities, when they are driving the project, to get the decision-makers higher up on the chain to move." She adds, "Similarly, the fact of getting players from the public sphere and from civil society together around a same table and at the same level of co-responsibility runs up against the democratic system of governance as it exists today."

Another central issue that remains unexplored for now is broadening well-being indicators to include indicators of the preservation and production of goods (both material and immaterial) for well-being.

Co-responsibility on the scale of a city

Ultimately, the goal of the Mulhouse approach and the TOGETHER project is to be able to apply co-responsibility on the scale of the city, based on the pilots run in each of the project's eight partner cities. As a forerunner, Mulhouse has just launched the step together with the TOGETHER Lead Expert. "Now, it is a question of evaluating the impact of each action to learn about co-responsibility as a whole," Sébastien Houssin explains.

Mulhouse, under the impetus of its mayor Jean Rottner, would like to introduce the principle of co-responsibility into certain areas of public action. In the area of social inclusion, the pilot "Multi-party Social Contract" project led by the city's Social Action Department, is one that could be institutionalized in order to monitor RSA social benefit recipients. "After the initial pilot project worked out well two years ago, we renewed this action this year. If the results are again conclusive, this co-responsibility approach could be extended to cover more of the benefit recipients."

For Sébastien Houssin, TOGETHER is also carrying an important societal project whose results will flow into European public policies. "As a territory, we also have been struck by the capacity citizens have to express a clear vision of well-being within a territory. The definitions of well-being that we are building on a local level will make it possible to develop a more universal vision on a European level."

By the end of the project in 2012, progress meetings of TOGETHER will be organised in each of the network's eight cities. These will be an opportunity for each partner to tour a co-responsible Europe and to discuss the progress of the action plans currently implemented on a local level.
 

Co-responsibility in action: the action of a pilot initiative at the Albert Schweitzer upper secondary school in Mulhouse

The Albert Schweitzer upper secondary school was facing a problem with its image, both inside and outside the school, and in 2008 decided to test out a co-responsibility approach. After an experimental phase carried out between March and May 2008, co-responsibility became an integral part of the school's approach starting in September 2008. Today, it gathers 1,000 students, 150 teachers and 50 members of the technical staff.
See project video.

 
Read more:

• TOGETHER - URBACT website