Healthcare

Cecosesola is a remarkable federation of Venezuelan cooperatives that artfully manages multiple ventures as commons while deeply immersed within a system of capitalist markets. 

Increasing the prevalence of perceived quality drivers through the expansion of home care cooperatives, the adoption of cooperatives’ practices by traditional agencies, and the implementation of industry-wide policies that facilitate them may significantly improve care quality across the home care sector. 

Healthcare-based interventions addressing social needs such as food and housing generally fail to impact the upstream wealth and power inequities underlying those needs. However, a small number of US healthcare organizations have begun addressing these upstream inequities by partnering with community wealth building initiatives. These initiatives include community land trusts, resident-owned communities, and worker cooperatives, which provide local residents ownership and control over their housing and workplaces. While these partnerships represent a novel, upstream approach to the social determinants of health, no research has yet evaluated them.

Equal Care Coop and Clapton Commons are mapping a local landscape of care and support in Clapton Common, Upper Clapton. Using KUMU, a powerful system mapping platform, we are creating an interactive map that makes the often invisible grassroots networks of care and support more visible and accessible to people giving and receiving care.

Equal Care's pilot in Commons-based care in Hackney builds on five years of work developing and delivering a ‘teams model’ of home care in Calderdale, Yorkshire.

With an unprecedented 20+ new start-up home care cooperatives under development across the country, the home care cooperative sector has reached a tipping point. In this session learn from young co-ops about their reflections on the start-up experience, including what they wish they had known before, the surprises they encountered along the way, and their recommendations and tips for future start-ups.

Home Care Cooperative managers/administrators wear many hats from HR to trainer, to scheduler and marketer and more! It is a lot to manage. In this session hear from experienced administrators on how they approach time management and boundary setting and prioritization to manage the never-ending to-do list and avoid burnout.

Cecosesola is established in Barquisimeto, capital of the state of Lara, located in the central-western region of Venezuela, as a cooperative integration organization that has been established since 1967. It is a meeting space where we make active life of more than 50 organizations, integrated into a network for the production of goods and services that brings together more than 20,000 associates from popular sectors. Through this network, we develop a wide variety of activities such as: agricultural production, small-scale agro-industrial production, funeral services, transportation, health services, financial services, mutual aid funds, distribution of foods and household items. We are made up of about 1,300 associated workers who manage daily activities through participation that is open to everyone, without hierarchical positions.

Solidaristic principles prove great in theory, but how do they hold up in practice? Specifically, in communities facing historical divestment and disenfranchisement, can mutualism and cooperativism serve as building blocks for crafting more equitable, sustainable economies and societies? 

A Venezuelan cooperative network that recently received the “Alternative Nobel Prize” tells its story.