From the 2nd to the 4th December 2019, BUSINNESSMED attended the first “Macro-level peer review Meeting” of the MedUp project in Tunis, Tunisia. MedUp is a four-year project, co-funded by the European Union to promote an enabling environment for the development of social entrepreneurship as an engine for inclusive growth and job creation. The project covers six partner countries in the Southern Mediterranean, namely Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia.

Organised by the Diesis Network, an EU network specialised in supporting social economy enterprises development, and Oxfam Italia, the meeting aimed to identify common issues and share good practices among policy makers and other social economy stakeholders from the EU and MENA countries. It brought together more than 40 participants, including governments, employers' representatives, UN agencies, academics and other civil society organisations.

During the three-day event, participants shared and discussed two specific cases: the European Commission's Task Force on Social Economy and the Scottish Strategy for Social Enterprise.

During  a video intervention, an ILO representative underlined the key role of the Social and Solidarity Economy in promoting gender equality, particularly in the MENA region, and concluded that “Social and Solidarity Economy enterprises in general and cooperatives in particular are well suited to advancing women's economic participation and gender equality in the world of work in the region and worldwide”.