Lipson Community College became a co-operative Trust school in 2009 and a Co-operative Academy in 2012, joining around 200 co-operative schools across England who have adopted a co-operative structure using a model developed by the Co-operative College. Situated in the city of Plymouth in Devon, it is a large, urban secondary school serving some of […]
Bicycle repair and renovation co-operative at Madras College
Students at Madras College in St Andrews, Scotland are involved in a co-operative enterprise that maintains and sells bicycles. Students source bikes destined for salvage for renovation and sale. The Madras Bicycle Business co-operative has been running for three years out of a workshop based in the school and is a member of the Co-operative […]
The Ruptors Street Dance Co-operative
The Ruptors is a street dance crew formed in 2008 by students at Lipson Community College, a co-operative school in Plymouth, Devon, south west England, and run as a Young Co-operative as part of the Co-operative College’s Young Co-operatives scheme. The crew consists of eight students ranging from years 10-12. Since 2008 the Ruptors has […]
Reconciling interests to make big business
The wine trellises fill the fertile valley floor of Rotaliana. It is often described as the most beautiful wine garden in Europe. Striking for its modernity in this region of Trentino, northern Italy, rich with Roman ruins and medieval buildings, is a steel-enmeshed three story office block with a low-lying grass roofed tasting building. This […]
Micro-loans help recovery in Uganda
Uganda may be referred to by travel agents as the Pearl of Africa but twenty one years of civil war has done little to enhance the living conditions of Ugandans. This is particularly obvious in the country’s north where 1.9 million people were displaced beginning with dictator Idi Amins atrocities followed by a series of […]
Paying a real living wage
Lake Atitlán lies in the remote Guatemalan highlands. The extraordinary beauty of the lake and the three volcanoes which almost appear to stand guard is in contrast to the poverty in which many of its indigenous people live. Luisa Rosario Xicay Tacaxoy is head of the Artesanas Atitlán Cooperative in one of the indigenous villages […]
Tenants unite to become owners
On the 27th of January 2000, after only weeks of rash preparation and planning, 51 tenants from the more than 100 year old buildings that make up the Bremer Höhe in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg, founded the Bremer Höhe Housing Cooperative. The concept behind this new cooperative was to prevent the sale of the historically protected […]
A co-op haven for restoration and conservation
For a team of art lovers, the restoration work at hand becomes a source of major satisfaction. One starts off with a filthy wall with dirt and surface damage which as it is being documented, studied and conserved finds its way back to its strengthened and uncovered original splendor, explains Agatha Grima, director of the […]
Health Is More Than a Prescription
The streets surrounding the Coomsocial basic-care health clinics bustle with activity: buses and taxies pull up to curbs, trucks deliver supplies, merchants sell to throngs of customers. The clinics are a hub of all this activity. Taxi drivers, bus companies, food vendors, medical suppliers, and many other small businesses depend on the traffic of patients […]
COOP Jednota sets the pace in Slovakia
There is an old Slovak saying, gold without wisdom is but clay. The same saying could be said to apply to the COOP Jednota, Slovakias largest domestic retail chain. Through the control and oversight of its member base it has been able to expand through a growth strategy implemented in 1990 and followed through with […]