WASL is building a solidarity economy hub in Tunisia.
This initiative is a partnership between three organizations: HIVE12 (Sousse, Tunisia), Association Jeunes Leaders (Monastir, Tunisia), and Solid State Community Industries (Surrey, Canada)
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HIVE12 is a coworking space, incubator, and enterprise education hub for the Sahel, located in Sousse.
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AJL is a multidisciplinary university center, working with high school and university students, and those seeking employment and aspiring to start their own businesses.
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Solid State is building a solidarity economy, especially via worker co-operatives where decisions are democratically made, and resources and revenues are democratically distributed.
We began working together in 2023 and with fundraising support from Eternal Sparks, and launched our partnership formally in 2025. We are looking to build a solidarity economy in Tunisia and across the Sahel and MENA.
Working together, we see significant potential for building enterprises in Tunisia using a cooperative development model. More than that, we seek to build a solidarity economy network so that new enterprises are not just released into the marketplace but are given on-going wrap-around support while actively collaborating with partner organizations across the region.
We are foundationally interested in ways of working that are non-extractive and can build collective wealth.
We believe that this partnership, based cooperative values and solidarity economy principles, can form the basis for a decolonial development model for Tunisia.
