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CoopZone Workshop:
Best Practices for Successful Co-op Development
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Panel discussion featuring Bruno Roelants, CICOPA Secretary General (Brussels), and others
June 14, 4:00 - 6:00 pm CT
A. In-person option (at CMC Congress): East/Midway Ballroom, Fairmont Winnipeg
B. Tele-conference option: please RSVP to Kaye Grant,
[email protected]
, and we will provide dial-in information.
The workshop is offered in English.
It
will take place at the CMC Congress, in Winnipeg.
A. Details on the in-person option: You may attend either the full CMC Congress or only the CoopZone workshop. To register for the full Congress, note that there is a special rate for locals. Conference registration information is available here. There is no charge for CoopZone (or CWCF) members to attend only the CoopZone workshop.
To also attend that evening's CDF Fund-raiser at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, there is a special rate for CoopZone members of $80; the regular rate is $120. This includes: a Museum tour, two free drinks, delicious hors d' oeuvres and live entertainment. To obtain this rate, please respond to Gonzalo Rodriguez ([email protected]) and inform him that you are a member of CoopZone. He will arrange your payment and confirm your attendance.
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CoopZone News
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CoopZone AGM: Note that the CoopZone AGM originally planned for June, 2016 in person had been postponed and will now be held via tele-conference on September
Sept. 20th, 3:30 pm ET for approximately 90 minutes.
There are several seats coming up for election, at least two of which (including one at-large) do not have incumbents running. The seats which are up for election are: Atlantic, BC, Professional Service Provider, and two at-large seats, one of which has only one year left in a term to fill a vacancy. Participating on the Board is a great way to stay in touch with co-operative development issues in the country. Please consider running or nominating another member; the Nominating Committee is made up of:
Peter Cameron (ON),
Erwan Bouchaud (MB), and
Ethel Côté (ON), with
Hazel Corcoran as staff support. We encourage you to contact any of them to discuss this possibility. More details will soon be available.
Tele-Learning: There will be a tele-learning session at
at 12 noon ET on July 5th, with Laird Hunter & Brian Iler for worker co-ops to ask questions of very experienced co-op lawyers. CoopZone members will be invited, too, but primarily as "observers."
CWCF-CoopZone Conference:
This is the 25th CWCF
Anniversary celebration. You'll want to be there.
November 2-5, 2016 in Vancouver. More details will soon be available.
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2016 CASC-ACE Conference in Calgary, May 31-June 3
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Inaugural Mark Goldblatt Memorial Lecture, at CASC-ACE Conference
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Participation and Governance
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Excerpted from COOPSAMERICAS NEWSLETTER, Issue 26, November 2015
A second panel carried out in the framework of the XIX Regional Conference addressed the subject of participation and governance in cooperatives. The activity had the participation of Denyse Guy, Executive Director of Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada - CMC; Felipe Rojas, founding partner and president of Garantías Comunitarias Latinoamérica (Community Guarantees Latin America); and Carlos Heller, a member of the Executive Committees of the International Confederation of Popular Banks and the International Association of Cooperative Banks, who is also president of Banco Credicoop and member of the national parliament of Argentina.
Guy had the opportunity to present the details and lessons learned from the interesting process of establishing CMC, the newly created national bilingual association that brings together all Canadian cooperatives and mutuals from the union of the two entities that historically have represented cooperatives and mutuals from the Anglophone and Francophone language groups. The creation of the new organization proposed a set of complex challenges due to cultural differences, the vastness of the country's territory, the existence of different traditions and models of governance between the two language groups, and the fact that it was not a merger that was sought, but the creation of a new entity. All these matters were resolved in a period of more than two years of intense consultation and negotiation.
She said that an important element that helped overcome the challenges was to take note of every one of the questions raised by the parties involved in the process, to find an answer and then share it with everyone, because the key to the process was to reach consensus.
Meanwhile, Heller noted that governance is one of the central issues of the cooperative movement at a time when it is called to be present in most sectors. He noted that one of the great difficulties is to be able to create large organizations and structures, without losing the values and historically distinctive features of cooperatives.
He stressed that issues related to management and efficiency should not be underestimated, so these concepts should not be left as the domain of companies with traditional capitalist models. Unlike other social players, cooperatives, also being enterprises, should unite and synthesize management efficiency with efficiency in terms of satisfaction of its institutional objectives. He recounted the experience of the Argentine financial cooperative movement, which, for historical and political circumstances, was forced to create a large cooperative bank concentrating virtually the entire movement, raising the challenge of maintaining the cooperative identity in the context of a large institution, for which two measures were applied. On the one hand, each branch is represented by delegates at the general assembly and has a local management committee, open to the participation of all with unlimited members, allowing horizontal participation and preventing the central bodies from having excessive weight in decision-making. In addition, a comprehensive management model was generated that coordinates the work of pro-bono directors with that of bank professionals.
Finally, Rojas made the formal presentation of a new technological tool: an app that serves as a platform for structuring and rating of governance processes. The instrument, developed together with Co-operatives of the Americas, allows real-time rating of each of the indicators and principles that shape a model of cooperative governance. The immediacy of the tool allows a real and permanent evaluation, rather than a score at a predetermined time that can give a distorted view of reality. On the other hand, as it can be used by all members, it gives them all the potential to influence the final score obtained by each entity in each area of evaluation, a prerequisite for the certification in cooperative governance implemented by Cooperatives of the Americas.
The full version of the document published by the Alliance on the issue of cooperative governance (Co-operative Governance Fit to Build Resilience in the Face of Complexity) can be downloaded from : http://s.coop/1wxix
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Appetite Growing for Local Food in Cape Breton
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In a time of rising food costs and growing appetites for knowing where food is coming from, a co-op that works with local producers and consumers is looking for support from the island's municipalities for its second year of operation.
Alicia Lake, co-ordinator of the Pan Cape Breton Local Food Hub Co-op, and Jim Mustard, an Inverness County councillor and member of the co-op's management committee, have begun making the rounds of the island's municipal councils looking for financial contributions of $5,000 each to support the second year of the two-year pilot project.
The aim of the food hub is to bring local producers together to connect them with local restaurants, grocers and other retail outlets in order to get more people buying and eating locally grown food.
Read the full article here.
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Open Sky Co-operative innovating novel approach to building employment
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Finding employment in a rural community is challenging even for people who have good work skills and experience. And when a person has a mental health challenge or a learning disability, it is even more difficult. Most employment training programs for this sector focus on helping teach skills like how to find a job and how to fit into a job.
The people at Open Sky Co-operative recognize that not everyone has the ability to gain the skills or habits that are most likely to get them a job. And, in a rural environment where jobs are in short supply for everyone, sometimes even having good skills doesn't result in work. A new approach is needed.
The New Brunswick Economic and Social Inclusion Corporation recognizes this challenge, and has provided Open Sky Co-operative with an Impact Grant to pilot a new way to develop jobs in the rural Sackville area.
Read more here.
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FCL and TGP help relief workers make a special delivery
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The food and supplies on board the Hercules went to northern communities impacted by the devastating wildfires. _Western Grocer_ |
Published in Western Grocer
After wildfire forced tens of thousands of Fort McMurray residents from their homes last week, officials across Alberta went to work collecting supplies for evacuees.
Earlier this week, Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL) and The Grocery People (TGP) answered a call from Alberta's Emergency Management Agency to prepare supplies for evacuees. They were on the tarmac at the Edmonton International Airport less than 16 hours later as supplies were loaded onto a Hercules military aircraft.
"We're here to help in any way that we can," said Albert Broyles, Warehouse Manager with TGP in Edmonton. "The people at every level of our organization are fantastic and I just knew that they'd make it happen."
On May 10, military personnel quickly unloaded supplies from two FCL/TGP trailers and, within minutes, they were ready to depart.
Read more here
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New solar co-op hopes to shake up Edmonton's energy grid
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Published in the Edmonton Sun, March 14, 2016
A new Edmonton solar co-operative aims to do what Alberta's rural electrical co-ops did 60 years ago and fundamentally reorganize the city's energy grid.
When utility companies refused to extend power lines into Alberta's rural heartland in the 1940s and 50s, farmers formed rural electrification associations to get the job done, said Warren Sarauer, board chairman of the Solar Power Investment Cooperative of Edmonton or Spice.
He said the new co-op aims to raise money and act as a broker to help condo boards and other organizations install power centres across the city, eventually building a greener and more resilient electrical grid. Read more here.
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Source - Co-operative News |
15 January 2016
In the 1920s, three "wheat pool" co-ops formed in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta to collectively market wheat on behalf of their farmer-members through a jointly owned Central Selling Agency. In 2007, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool failed financially and formally severed all links to its co-operative roots.
The international co-operative movement has seen a series of catastrophic failures of large scale co-operatives in recent decades, such as the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, retail co-ops in Germany, France and Atlantic Canada, banking in Austria and the near meltdown of the Co-operative Group in the UK. Yet our co-operative culture has not been one of seeking to understand the factors which are common in these events and which, if understood, could be used to prevent such collapses in the future.
When co-operatives gather from around the world, it tends to be a time of celebration. They celebrate their trading success and the impact that they have had on people's lives across the globe.
All this is to be admired, but there is also an opportunity missed. Not all co-ops will have thrived between gatherings. Sadly, some will have hit major crises and no longer be there. When this happens the major unspoken issue is not so much an elephant in the room, but which elephants are no longer there.
A common problem
The starting point of this analysis was the similarity between the crisis experienced by the Co-operative Group in the UK and the collapse of the Canadian Wheat Pools. Two very different forms of co-ops in two very different cultures, but the analysis of why one failed gave significant insights into the failings of the other.
Read more here.
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The "Sharing Economy" Is the Problem
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By Brian Van Slyke and David Morgan, Grassroots Economic Organizing
The premise is seductive in its simplicity: people have skills, and customers want services. Silicon Valley plays matchmaker, churning out apps that pair workers with work. Now, anyone can rent out an apartment with AirBnB, become a cabbie through Uber, or clean houses using Homejoy.
But under the guise of innovation and progress, companies are stripping away worker protections, pushing down wages, and flouting government regulations. At its core, the sharing economy is a scheme to shift risk from companies to workers, discourage labor organizing, and ensure that capitalists can reap huge profits with low fixed costs. Read more here.
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CoopZone is a network of people and organizations which help others to start and develop co-operatives.
Please send any comments, suggestions and ideas for articles to:
Editor of CoopZone Newsletter
Phone: 204-257-
1198
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