We aim to alleviate hunger and poverty and to promote healthy living and a strong sense of self for the orphans and vulnerable children of Toosneg village, helping them grow into confident, awakened human beings.
The Almería Agricultural Cooperative Model: Building successful economic and social communities
In 1955, the Andalucían province of Almería, in southeastern Spain, was a drought-ridden area with little infrastructure and a GDP per capita of less than half the national average. Most residents who had not already fled in search of better opportunities were merely subsisting. Today, it is the top Spanish fruit and vegetable growing area […]
CAJAMAR, Cajas Rurales Unidas
Cajamar Caja Rural (soon to change to Cajas Rurales Unidas), is a credit cooperative bank formed by the merging of the credit cooperatives (cajas rurales) of Andalucía (Almería and Málaga in 2000), Murcia (Campo de Cartagena in 1989), Madrid (Grumeco in 2000), Castilla y León (Caja Rural del Duero in 2007), Baleares (Caixa Rural de […]
Co-operative empowerment in the red light district
1849 – San Francisco heaved with gold-seeking miners and the sailors that had transported them into the Bay from as far away as Australia. The Barbary Coast, the town’s red light district with its pimps, petty thieves and dance halls, drew these travellers in. 1997 – the historic Barbary Coast still plays home to the […]
Turning waste fruit into a profitable business
In the small low-income community of Toisapu, in the Maluku islands, nutmeg used to be seen as a waste fruit. Local villagers would use the nutmeg seed and its mesh, and would throw away the outer cover or the fruit itself. That all changed in 2010, when the Sejuk Women Cooperative came up with the […]
Closing the Gender Gap in Cooperative Banking
Italy lags behind almost every other European country when it comes to womens employment. Employment rates for men are more than 20 percentage points higher than those for women. And women represent only 4 percent of company board members, the second-lowest rate in Western Europe, even though on average Italian women are better educated than […]
The mooring men cooperative
The Global Worker Cooperative Day, the main international event for worker and social cooperatives, will be held today (November 16, 2012) in Marseille, in the framework of the International Year of Cooperatives and of the Congress of the French Worker Cooperatives (Scop). The event, organized jointly by CICOPA and CG Scop, was preceded by a […]
Korean Students Learn from the BSC
In August 2012, Students from Korea University and Yeonsae University visited the Berkeley Student Cooperative as part of a two-week tour of American student cooperatives. Students at these schools in Seoul plan to form housing cooperatives to lower living costs, and visited the North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO) headquarters, the BSC, the Santa Barbara […]
Berkeley Student Cooperative
The Berkeley Student Cooperative is a 501c3 nonprofit housing cooperative that provides affordable housing in room and board houses and apartments to students at UC Berkeley and other Bay Area colleges and universities. Presently the BSC has over 1300 student members living in or eating at twenty student housing cooperatives around the UC Berkeley campus. […]
A Source for Sustainable Teak
Tropical hardwoods have long been in the environmental spotlight as potentially unsustainable. In Asia, for example, the demand for teak can have serious environmental impacts and disastrous effects on local communities. Much of the worlds teak comes from Indonesia, where native forests are often clear-cut. But one cooperative in Southeast Sulawesi is now producing certified […]