Cooperative Enterprise
Cooperative Organization Equalizes the Relationship between Labor and Capital and Offers Young People an Opportunity to Take Responsibility for Their Life & Work
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Sustainable, Creative Profit Making Enterprises
In 2008, Bill Gates launched a movement, where he called for an evolution of capitalism in order to address the challenges of 21st century life. He called it “creative capitalism.” Along with Warren Buffet, he has spearheaded a dialogue and a movement that shows hope of finding better approaches to global challenges such as the loss of high quality, chemical free soil and climate change. Our internships and business activities seek to participate in this emerging experiment. We see it as a necessary and vital experiment for the future of humanity. The planet friendly profit making enterprises (in the initial phases) take a holistic approach to the interconnection of health, nutrition, and food production. More specifically, this takes the form of (1) a fund to convert conventional farmland to organic, (2) a local permaculture farm, (3) an educational center, (4) a bakery using ancient grains and gluten free flours, (4) a web presence that connects the program with the wider population and generates energetic and financial support by building an extended community. Two core perspectives vital to our enterprises that move beyond sustainability are Re-Generative Design and Cooperative Entrepreneurship. |
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Our various partnerships provide a wide variety of apprenticeships in occupations that reconnect the human experience with the natural ecology on which we depend. Initial opportunities include the local food movement (from soil to table), sustainable nutrition, food service, and customer relationships.
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Encouraging Individual Initiative & Mutual Cooperation
One model of creative capitalism, which has grown over 50 years, is the Mondragon initiative located in the Basque region of Spain. Mondragon's founder believed that the Basque people could meet their economic needs and sustain their cultural heritage through a higher level of worker participation and commitment to the success of their business activities. To test his hypothesis he established a small cooperative company to produce oil lamps and trained a cadre of initial leaders in an approach to management that integrated sound business practices with a high level of worker participation. Sixty-five years later, this venture has grown to become a complex of interrelated cooperative companies that earn roughly $20 billion annually while employing approximately 100,000 workers. Mondragon is Spain's fourth largest enterprise, conducts business worldwide, and has continued to operate effectively in the midst of Spain’s economic turmoil. What allowed Mondragon to become so successful in a relatively short period of time was its approach to worker/management participation, its cooperative principles and values, and its understanding that: 1) the various enterprises needed to work together instead of in isolation; 2) in order to be successful, cooperative companies needed to operate on the basis of sound management practices, utilize expert technical knowledge, and engage in careful financial planning; and that, 3) it is necessary to experiment pragmatically in developing the organizational structures of creative enterprises while staying true to the underlying values and principles, because changes in the economic and social environments require ongoing innovation. |
The time is ripe for an interrelated sector of Creative/Cooperative
Business Enterprise and Practical Evolutionary Education
in the eastern United States
My premise is cooking --that defined broadly enough to take in the whole spectrum of techniques people have devised for transforming the raw stuff of nature into nutritious and appealing things for us to eat and drink--Is one of the most interesting and worthwhile things we humans do…
…I learned things about the natural world (and our participation in it) that I don't think I could've learned any other way. I learned far more than I expected to about the nature of work, the meaning of health, about tradition and ritual, self-reliance and community, the rhythms of everyday life, and the supreme satisfaction of producing something I previously only could've imagined consuming, And doing it outside of the cash economy for no other reason but love. Michael Pollan - Cooked
…I learned things about the natural world (and our participation in it) that I don't think I could've learned any other way. I learned far more than I expected to about the nature of work, the meaning of health, about tradition and ritual, self-reliance and community, the rhythms of everyday life, and the supreme satisfaction of producing something I previously only could've imagined consuming, And doing it outside of the cash economy for no other reason but love. Michael Pollan - Cooked
