“Such fun!” said one member of the Killick Coast North Seniors Co-operative (KCN Seniors Co-op).
We had just finished playing the game Co-opoly at our weekly Games Night. Ten players at two tables were each assigned individual roles as members of a co-operative. To win, each co-operative must master various challenges and ultimately co-create a second co-operative for the community. If individual members, or the co-operative itself, run out of resources, all members of that co-operative lose the game.
“Very different, very different…,” commented another player, comparing it to competitive and profit-oriented games like Monopoly or Rumoli, where one or only a few individual players win while others lose. Everyone loved the fun activities and communal decision-making.
At KCN Seniors Co-op in rural Newfoundland—incorporated on June 12, 2024—older adults have taken ownership of existing and anticipated challenges and helped co-create future solutions: enabling seniors to age well in their own homes, despite previously lacking the services and support networks needed to do so. In participatory workshops, community members imagined their preferred futures and jointly identified the current and future needs of the community.
Our co-operative values become lived experiences through the social events, shared meals, and service activities provided by volunteers and co-op members (e.g., help with transportation, technology coaching, grocery shopping, and hot meal delivery). Jointly envisioning our preferred futures helps forge the path to get there and creates the memories that will sustain the community. It builds resilience and creates the flexibility needed to adapt to the changes and challenges experienced by community members on their journey.
Our values, principles, and processes constantly remind us—as we remind each other—of the importance of challenging the status quo of existing social and economic relations. Continuing along the co-operative path will help us consolidate and further develop the future described in Restakis’ vision of a humanized economy, with all of us as “fellow travellers on a common road to building a better society for all” (Restakis, J., 2010, Humanizing the Economy: Co-operatives in the Age of Capital).
Together, we can prioritize reciprocal relationships and relational services over profitable commodities, and cooperative service delivery in local communities over market-driven solutions for the masses. We can also establish “social care…[as a] shared outcome between caregiver and care receiver.” As a result, we expand democratic space, help bring forth the “profound joy of collective effort,” and “institutionalize reciprocity” (ibid.). As members of our co-operatives and of the ecosystems we are part of, we hold each other accountable for living up to our values and principles. We support each other in the daily work of co-creating the future we want and the organizations we need, and we demonstrate empathy and solidarity by helping each other back up when we falter or fail.
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