Halandri Parents SCE is a Social Cooperative Enterprise created by a group of parents to address the need to offer childcare services to preschool and school-age children and their families. Its main activities include:

  • Developing an information network with regard to issues pertaining to preschool, primary and secondary education.
  • Developing welfare structures for preschool and school-age children.
  • Developing social solidarity and mutual-assistance networks between parents and teachers.
  • Developing welfare structures that ensure school-age children have access to educational services, e.g. cooperative school of private tuition for secondary education students, cooperate foreign language school of private tuition.
  • Undertaking entertainment, recreational and cultural activities in public areas of the city aimed at the groups served by the Social Cooperative Enterprise.
  • Undertaking activities to support the public nature of schools via establishing cooperative practices between parents and their respective associations.

The Social Cooperative Enterprise is not looking to make a profit. Our Articles of Association clearly stipulate that 5% of the total profits are used to form a reserve, 35% are distributed to company employees and the remaining 60% are reinvested in current, new or similar activities.

Finally, note that our Social Cooperative Enterprise belongs in the category of care-giving cooperatives and is vested with a trading capacity by law.

Who can become a member

  • Any natural person who adheres to the principles and pursuits of the Social Cooperative Enterprise, is a parent and resides or is registered in the Municipality of Halandri.
  • Any legal entity who abides by the same principles and wishes to combine their social activities with the pursuits of the Social Cooperative Enterprise, subject to the limitations set out in the provisions of article 3 of Law 4019/2011.
  • Without prejudice to the provisions of Article 3 of Law 4019/2011, local-government authorities and legal entities governed by public law which are part of local-government authorities are not eligible for membership.

We strongly believe that the way we choose to address any problem can be of greater importance than the problem itself. In this respect, the only valid option for us was to explore solutions in the context of social economy, in the spirit of collective action and solidarity. Our choice of the cooperative model highlights the need to clearly separate our actions from the mainstream profit-driven mentality and to provide a viable alternative that leads to a just, peace-based, and fully democratic society.

Our actions speak for themselves!

Actively contributing to positive social change, we recently announced our partnership with the Margarita Special Vocational Training Centre which works for the social and professional inclusion of young people with intellectual disabilities (https://www.cooplife.org/index.php/our-actions/232-margarita-special-vocational-training-centre).

In its second year of operation, our cooperative school of private tuition has doubled its students and reinforced its social contribution. This school gives students coming from low-income families a better chance of pursuing university studies. It has already been established as a rapidly developing, up-and-coming educational institution in the area. What is more, it was referenced as an example of good Greek cooperative practices in the Heinrich Böll Foundation guide for cooperative enterprises (https://www.cooplife.org/index.php/our-actions/233-example-halandri-social-cooperative-school-of-private-tuition).

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Another initiative that met with great success last year and will continue also this year is our parent group coaching program, which aims at raising public awareness, fostering the exchange of opinions and educating parents and adolescents on a series of general and specialised topics selected following close communication between the coach and the parents (https://www.cooplife.org/index.php/our-actions/229-parent-group-coaching).

In line with our statutory objective to undertake cultural activities, last year we organized seven theatrical plays for children, free of charge for every family in the city.

Furthermore, we participated in the celebrations of the World Puppetry Day with a 10-minute street theatre performance, inspired by the doll making and animation seminars organised in January and February (https://www.cooplife.org/index.php/our-actions/226-world-puppetry-day).

puppetry

In November we organized the 1st International Cooperative Cartoon Festival, which attratcted 213 participants from 49 countries all over the world (https://www.cooplife.org/index.php/international-cooperative-cartoon-festival).

CoopLife.org is an Online Social Enterprise Magazine created by Halandri Parents Social Cooperative Enterprise

Team up with us in building the first cooperative day nursery in Attica!

The space has been found. It is a 130 square metre stone-built house in a 750 square metre site right next to an astounding native forest area of a total of 60 acres that stretches for 3 municipalities. The house is the property of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA).

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We are running a fundraising campaign to collect support to achieve our goals. Our Education Action Calendar 2015 is our first attempt to reach out to the world to help us with our day nursery project. Reaching our tipping point goal marks the start of our long journey to reshape pre-school education in our community. These funds will cover the initial expenses for the administrative and technical procedures required to set up our day nursery. The total funds required to carry out construction works and suitably refurbish the day nursery amount to around 80,000 euros. To ensure full transparency, a detailed breakdown of the use of all funds will be published for each stage of the project.

Once we have established this first cooperative day nursery in our municipality, we aim to expand the model of a small preschool addressing the needs of a community to other locations of the city. Developing a network of cooperative day nurseries per area is in tune with the communal mentality of social economy, which serves the needs of a community based on its collective actions.

– See more at:  https://startsomegood.com/Venture/halandri_parents_social_cooperative_enterprise/Campaigns/Show/education_action_calendar_2015#sthash.aCroP5BZ.dpuf

Education is the cornerstone of any truly humane society.

An overview of preschool education 4 years ago

Cooperatives can make a difference!

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