Youth Realities & Responses

COOPERATIVES REFERENCED

$$$ 

By and large, most of the creative capital solutions employed by the coopyouth interviewed involved some level of starting with something seemingly insignificant and incrementally growing their resources and capital by continuously leveraging what they had accumulated at key points to invest in more opportunities for financial growth.

Borrowed Equipment & “Spec” Work

Red Root (Worker, Philippines) borrowed a computer and did speculative (i.e. with no guarantee of payment) work in order to build a portfolio of completed projects. They were ultimately able to get paid contracts on the strength of that portfolio, the earnings from which they slowly began to reinvest in the cooperative by purchasing additional equipment.

Un- & Under- paid Labor

During Red Root’s (Worker, Philippines) process of building their portfolio through unpaid work, their members needed to work other jobs to meet their needs. As they started to earn money as a cooperative and reinvest funds back into the organization, they accepted less payment for their labor in order to build the cooperative to a scale that could provide all members sufficient income. Repaired Nations (MSC, United States) has largely depended on volunteer or under-compensated labor to power its initial years of existence, similar to all the coopyouth networks interviewed for this toolkit. Most networks and representative entities within the Cooperative Movement for youth do not initially have - and sometimes have no plans for - any income generating activities and much rely on donations and grants, which typically aren’t awarded to organization’s without a significant track record of activities and accomplishments. There is a saying in English, “we don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg;” in this context, coopyouth do the seeming impossible by doing the very things they need money for using their unpaid and underpaid labor in order to “earn” money in the eyes of grantmakers and donors. Needing to “earn” or do enough to “deserve” money needed to survive and thrive is a symptom of capitalism and “capitalist realism,” discussed more in the “Words Mean Things” section called “Dirty Words.”

Incremental Fundraising

Youth Cooperative Hub (MSC, South Africa) grew spinach from seed and sold it, then used the funds from the spinach sales to run a bake sale. With the bake sale money they earned, they organized one of their first training events for which they charged some registration fees. Before this process, funders were uninterested in supporting them, though once officials from a governmental agency learned of the educational event they executed, they received a considerable grant to continue that work. Similarly, Alchemy Collective (Worker, USA) began by building a small, mobile coffee cart as cheaply as they could. From the cart, they began to sell coffee at various events (e.g. farmers’ market) until they had enough money to rent out a storefront. The storefront didn’t have running water or a bathroom, but the cooperative still managed to have a steady and growing customer base. After garnering sufficient community support by becoming well known in the neighborhood for their coffee and customer service, they conducted a community crowdfunding campaign in order to retire the cart and move into the larger, full-service retail space around the corner that they still operate today. The Youth Committee (Network, Global; formerly Global Youth Network) used a similar incremental approach by beginning with a very small amount of money given by its host organization, the International Cooperative Alliance, and told others about the contribution in order to demonstrate the trust the movement had in the organization. This outreach attracted additional funders that felt “safer” contributing money after the group had effectively been cosigned by another cooperative entity. After each new donation, the Chair of the Youth Committee was able to attract increasingly larger funds until they amassed just shy of half a million USD.

Seize the Means

One of the most powerful ways in which some of the coopyouth interviewed accessed the costly resources they needed to develop their cooperative was to literally seize the means of production from capitalists. Vio.me (Worker, Greece) occupied and took control of a capitalist-owned factory that had ceased production as a result of an economic recession, after the operation of that factory ceased to be profitable for its passive owner. This strategy has been employed by cooperatives in the Americas and Europe in manufacturing, retail, and housing over the past few decades, and is perhaps one of the simplest and most effective ways to obtain the capital and resources needed to build a better world. 

Shares & Solidarity

In order to design and begin operations in the factory they seized from the capitalist sector, Vio.me (Worker, Greece) depended solely on individual contributions from their immediate community and ecosystem of impact. To do so, they collected initial member shares from members, and hosted a series of solidarity events with various fundraising elements (e.g. raffles, games). Through these heavily community-based financing mechanisms, they were able to buy the materials and equipment they needed to begin operations with the existing collective wealth of their community, while also elevating community awareness and engagement in the work and aims of the cooperative. 

PEOPLE 

The fundraising tactics employed by Vio.me (Worker, Greece) had a twofold impact of raising needed start-up capital, as well as building broad-based community support for the activities of the cooperative. Adjacent to this process, Vio.me explicitly asked the community to advise them on what they should produce in the factory, and through the direct engagement process it was collectively determined that if the cooperative were to use the factory to manufacture sustainable cleaning products, it would be of the greatest service to them. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the work of the cooperative was in incredible need by the community and beyond - and as part of Vio.me’s continued engagement with their neighbors, even educated those interested in how to make cleaning products at home. Through their intentional organizing methods engaging their broader ecosystem of impact, the cooperative is supported by and considered an integral member of their local community and, thereby, less vulnerable in the face of unexpected events, such as a global pandemic. The start-up process for the Youth Committee (Network, Global; formerly Global Youth Network) was entirely unfunded and coordinated through the work of various volunteers - with a slew of other responsibilities - scattered across timezones, languages, and cultures. While the realities of this organizing context greatly slowed how quickly the Network could develop, the Chair of the network interviewed for this toolkit reports that the slow pace of the process allowed them to build distributed grassroots power that is more representative of coopyouth globally. The coopyouth who were drawn to and engaged in the work were truly committed, as a result, and the organizers had time to develop trust in and relationships with one another, both of these aspects have served to make the network stronger, thereby less susceptible to cooptation or corruption.

ADMINISTRATIVE 

Bureaucracy and tedium are centerpieces of most kinds of organizational development that require engaging with regulatory or financial institutions. For example, Ventanilla (Worker, Mexico), a cooperative restoring and maintaining their local watershed, was prohibited by the government from working to repopulate mangroves decimated by a hurricane. After the hurricane, the government told people to wait to conduct ecological restoration work - which ultimately took the government six years. The cooperative chose to disregard the governmental prohibition and plant new mangroves illegally, but ethically and necessarily. If they had not chosen to just continue their important work, enough time would have passed that much of the watershed flora, fauna, and all the kinds of life it supports would have washed away into the sea without the rooting and foundational mangrove trees. Ventanilla was able to persevere through seemingly insurmountable bureaucracy through a commitment to their values, that they knew they evolved with their unique expertise around their own ecosystem of impact, rather than falling victim to external systems that may claim moral superiority or to know more about their own lives than they do.

Just. Keep. Meeting.

In a similar vein to keep working according to one’s values and the immediate needs of the community - even in the face of bureaucratic authority, a common thread that arose through the interview process was the commitment to “just keep meeting,” no matter what literal or figurative storms, downturns, or periods of uncertainty the cooperative may experience. This sentiment is especially important in the context of cooperative start-up processes, when there is seemingly less to lose, and it is much easier for individuals to drop-out or lose faith in the process. Gencisi (Worker, Turkey) initially began as a media endeavor that did not work out, but the group continued to meet for almost two years until they evolved the shape and strategy of the cooperative they operate today. They also extended this practice in the response of their cooperative to the Covid-19 pandemic, which helped them to persist in their work through crisis, which is a type of development in a cooperative that is typically unanticipated and unprecedented. For more on how they just kept meeting during the pandemic, and even engaged people outside their cooperative in the practice, review the key issue chapter on “Crisis and Conflict.” Similarly, during many of its initial years of development and operation, the ICYC (Network, Asia-Pacific) had no funding, a vague mandate, and only part-time volunteers that consistently transitioned out of participation every few years. In spite of these challenges, ICYC just kept meeting and engaging with any and all youth who were willing and able to participate in order to keep the endeavor alive, slowly evolving an identity, membership, and slate of activities. In many ways, the network “kept the light on” until a cadre of youth with sufficient time, resources, and vision could dedicate themselves to realizing the organization’s cooperative potential. Albanyan CICS (User, Nigeria) reported that, at times, they’ve not had sufficient funds with which to provide the credit or savings services for which the cooperative was founded in the first place. However, the cooperative has a practice of continuing to meet weekly and treat those meetings as spaces of fellowship and education, as they find their broader cooperative purpose in learning and working in community with one another, not just providing financial services. Prioritizing fellowship and social activities within a cooperative serve to break the “business ontology” mold imposed by “capitalist realism,” which suggests cooperatives are only businesses trading in financial capital in a competitive marketplace. By acknowledging that real cooperative work extends well beyond the activities that get recorded on an enterprise’s Balance Sheet, even to the extent these priorities may cost the organization money or other resources, is a key part of cooperativism that clearly demonstrates it is not just a business “alternative” or “kinder, gentler form of capitalism.” For more on “business ontology” and “capitalist realism,” refer to the “Dirty Words” section of “Words Mean Things.”