STRO: Social TRade Organisations

Started as a research and development program, Social Trade Organisations cooperating in the STRO network have created a set of innovative approaches to solve economic and development problems that is based on a theoretical background of sustainability and social justice and supported by state of the art software. These new ways of working with money, and altering the very concept of money within the market place, are being implemented by a wide range of organizations ranging from producing cooperatives, micro-financial institutions, groups of entrepreneurs, and governments.

This is how we develop our innovative methods:

• study the present situation and research innovative solution;
• start pilot project to test these solutions;
• when necessary initiate a new pilot is to test improvements based on the experiences of the first pilot;
• initiate demonstration projects once a method is close to its anticipated optimal performance; and
• upscale and expand the scope of the solution using open source software, manuals etc.

Presently most Social TRade initiatives are concentrated in Latin America.