The recession: an opportunity for the third sector?

Repossessions are rocketing, public finances dwindling and civil unrest rising, but amid the gloom there was a strong sense of optimism among delegates at this week’s NCVO conference.

Vince Cable set the tone in the first speech of the day when he urged the voluntary sector to make its voice heard and step forward as leaders as the private sector moves into paralysis and government struggles to find a voice.

As the need for social housing and independent financial advice and assistance increases, organizations able to offer new – and old – models of housing and banking will help these institutions carve out a way forward. The benefits – or dangers – of hundreds of ex-bankers finding themselves back in the job market was not lost on charity bosses seeking new talent as demand for their services increases, and the overall breakdown of corporate culture was seen as an opportunity for not for profits.

As lives are re-balanced in the light of a changed economic climate, people are seeking new sets of values, values at the heart of the voluntary sector. In workshops throughout the day the shape of the post-recession landscape was considered and the role charities can play in shaping an alternative future discussed.

Should we return to the origins of civil society, to a revival of community development, to mutual styles of banking? Or should we look forward to new models of activism and community work, employing latest technologies to inspire and motivate group action?

To Stuart Etherington, chief executive of NCVO, the strength of the sector lies in numbers. Announcing a new alliance for civil society, bringing together the trade union and co-operative movements, universities and the voluntary and community sector, he said that the benefits recession brings will need to be vigorously pursued.

A new European civil society network to be launched in Brussels this summer will drive the new agenda for civil society across Europe. ‘We’ve seen the age of the market and the age of the expanded state. We are now entering a new era that rebalances the role the third partner plays,’ he said.

But the final word of the day went to Benjamin Barber, civil society theorist and former advisor to Clinton and Gaddafi. He urged a revival of social trust and civil society, not on a national or even European scale, but on a global platform. The challenges society faces today, from collapsing financial institutions to environmental disaster, are not defined by territorial boundaries.

Only civil society institutions that are able to span the globe will be able to tackle and benefit from the challenges of the global recession. Their role will be to bring people back to civil society, to help those schooled only in the lessons of the marketplace to re-learn the lessons of democracy.

Civil society will need to look beyond national and European borders to create a new form of transnational civil society and interdependence, he said, and he sent the audience of delegates home with a clarion call to take up the opportunity this recession offers and pave a new way forward for society.

In the words of an old gospel song he urged the sector to step up to the mark, saying, ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for.’