Mid of May, a delegation of platform coops from Belgium visited Berlin for a two-day learning journey organized by Andreas Arnold, Thomas Dönnebrink & Ela Kagel from SUPERMARKT Berlin with the organisational and financial support of Mona Meyer zu Kniendorf and Miriam Sufraga from BeShared and platforms2share. 



The five visiting platform coops (Usitoo, FitMyNest, Cobea, Coop It Easy and Wibee) were matched with corresponding Berlin based coops such as Leihbar, SharePar, Society of Owners, CZY WRK, Community Land Trust, Mietshäuser Syndikat, Drivy, Pampa, Fairmondo and Hostsharing. The aim of the Learning Journey was to engage in knowledge exchange and mutual learning.

The first day started off with a brief introduction round. After a landscape mapping of challenges and potentials of each project,  the tandem groups were invited to go for a walk in order to get to know each other and the local context. During a case clinic, participants could get peer support for a particular challenge they are currently facing wiht their organization. Later, the group visited the German cooperative newspaper taz and could learn more about its long-standing experience as a cooperative.

During the second day, Dr. Dominika Wruk from platforms2share gave an input on the relation between sharing and platform organizations and their insitutional environments. As part of a CoCreation Lab, the big group split up in smaller groups according to the platforms present at the meeting.

One result of the Leaning Journey was that as of now, the different actors in the field are not connected sufficiently. Thus, platform coops could engage more with each other in order to share knowledge and experiences. Moreover, the participants agreed that the a shared political strategy for platform coops is need in order to advocate their work. A detailed documentation about the event can be read here.

The Learning Journey was accompanied and financed by Smart Belgium and Hub Brussels / EU-GIVE.

This video documenting the two-days Learning Journey was produced with the help of the BeShared project.