Cooperative Development Institute: Northeast Center for Cooperative Business

Green Worker Cooperatives is a finalist in the Revelation to Action ideas competition. Other finalists include AS220, a community arts cooperative in Providence RI providing living and studio space to artists; Red Tomato, the local foods marketing network in eastern MA; and the Common Ground Country Fair, a revival of agricultural festivals in Maine. Too bad you only get 3 votes! Voting closes this week -- the top prize is $50,000.

LSA Family Health Service, founded in 1958, is a nonprofit community based organization that works with the people of East Harlem to address the physical, emotional, educational, and spiritual dimensions of family health. Its home-based and center-based programs are designed to empower those who are most vulnerable and who have least access to the basic necessities of life in the conviction that the entire community grows when individuals and families are affirmed in their own dignity.

At this time, we are recruiting for a Cooperative Business Organizer/Manager to incubate a worker-owner cooperative that will run the warehousing, tagging and inventory functions of a retail thrift store. This is a p/t position (10 hours/week) to start, with the potential to grow into a f/t position with the development of a comprehensive Co-op Incubation Program.

There are some great ideas being proposed at the "Revelation to Action" contest sponsored by Green Mountain Coffee and Ashoka's Changemakers. They want to find and help fund the most innovative ideas and organizations that strengthen and improve communities in Maine, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Worker Cooperative Office Manager

The Center for Family Life in Sunset Park promotes and supports the founding of cooperative businesses as part of our community development initiative. Under the auspices of our Adult Employment Program, our first cooperative business, “We Can Do It! Women’s Cooperative”(Si Se Puede!) was incubated and launched in August of 2006. This Coop has 23 members who have worked together to build a successful housecleaning business. All of the members of the coop are considered “Worker Owners” and decisions in the group are all made democratically with each owner having an equal vote. Since 2006, CFL has incubated three additional cooperative businesses and a collective, We Can Fix It!, Beyond Care, a childcare cooperative, a women’s painting cooperative and an international cooking collective called Émigré Gourmet.

The successful candidate for the position of Cooperative Office Manager will have:

From the Center for Family Life newsletter:
The We Can Do It!/Sí Se Puede! Women's Cooperative was recognized at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus' 2009 Public Policy Conference, Latinos Leading in a Global Society. Cooperative members traveled to Washington to participate in the conference's closing session, where Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez highlighted the cooperative as an example of innovative Latino entrepreneurs in the green economy.

An article by Kristie Snyder in GreenLeaf, the GreenStar Market newsletter, encourages members to celebrate co-op month in all the different ways available to them, including food, health products, housing, banking, childcare, restaurants, and crafts.

A recent episode of On the Money featured the Center for Family Life, which has helped recent immigrants start four worker cooperatives, the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York, which started the COLORS worker-owned restaurant, and the Urban Justice Center, which provided legal advice to both.