Catalyzing worker co-ops & the solidarity economy
An online course in English that will give you a detailed introduction to one of the most advanced cooperative ecosystems in the world: the Mondragon Cooperative Experience.
The audience for this course
Anyone interested in the Mondragon Cooperative Experience. They might be students or faculty in different fields (humanities, education, social sciences, business...) as well as researchers, co-op members or developers, or others.
To imagine and create a world rooted in values of economic justice and economic democracy, we need to devise a new vocabulary. We must be able to describe what we want if we are to have any hope of making the structural changes we desire.
In Kuwait, the first attempts at cooperation began in 1941 at Al-Mubarakiya School, through a cooperative association to manage the school canteen, and after that the experience spread to other schools, and in the fifties I was a contributor to the Al-Sabah and Al-Siddiq school associations.
As for the first official cooperative society owned by the people of the region, it was the Kaifan Society, which was founded in 1962, with the purpose of serving the region and providing consumer goods and foodstuffs to the region’s residents and patrons.
A group of residents in the New Center neighborhood are forming a nonprofit housing cooperative, a move the residents contend is the only way they can secure affordable and safe living conditions in an era of fast-rising rents.
“If we can afford to rent something, we should be able to afford to buy something of our own, right? But that’s not always true,” Reese says. “There are barriers. We also need to understand credit and debt. That pre-work to being mortgage ready is very important to learn.”
The latest edition of the World Cooperative Monitor annual report not only details the rankings of the top 300 cooperatives and mutuals around the world, but also analyses how they promote themselves. Titled ‘Exploring the Cooperative Economy: Report 2023’, the publication is the 12th of its kind and was launched today.
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Are you excited to be part of the biggest Worker Co-op Conference to date? Presented by the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives and the Democracy at Work Institute, the 2024 Worker Co-op Conference will be held in Chicago, Illinois. As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the USFWC, and continue to build momentum for workplace democracy, this event will be a moment to deepen relationships with like-minded movements and labor allies focused on the solidarity economy.
At first blush, the 3-Mile residents did not seem like a population that could even contemplate buying an 11-acre, $2.4 million property. Park residents include construction workers, teachers, retirees, hotel cleaners, restaurant cooks and store clerks. Around 80% are Hispanic, and the majority of the community doesn’t speak fluent English.
Many residents didn’t seriously contemplate buying the property until Felix Jimenez, a tenant who has lived at 3-Mile since the late 1980s and raised five children while living there, sought outside help.
In this week’s bonus episode, Cameron Madill takes us on his succession journey, which began years ago when he started having conversations with older business owners, many of whom seemed to feel trapped. They’d had a lot of success, they were proud of the business they’d built, but they weren’t sure what to do with it or how to leave it. None of the usual options seemed terribly appealing.
