This October, CCFC is joining over 65,000 co-operatives and credit unions across the United States in celebrating Co-op Month, observed nationally since 1964. This year’s theme is “Co-ops Build Economic Power,” and highlights the cooperative business model as the best way to build an economy that empowers everyone. Co-ops and their members are working together to build stronger, more inclusive, and resilient communities.
As businesses face inflation and supply chain challenges, cooperatives provide stability and opportunity. As employees question their role in the economy, cooperatives are creating dignified, empowering jobs with paths to ownership and wealth-building. As communities tire of rhetoric, cooperatives are creating the meaningful diversity and equity at the heart of an inclusive economy.
Co-ops are all around us and in several business sectors: Agriculture, Housing, Finance, Utilities, and more. Across the country, people have used food co-ops to improve access to healthy, local, affordable food, and build stronger, more inclusive communities. Most of these grocery stores got their start during times of social and economic change, enabling people to access healthy food, support local producers, and provide good jobs. A new wave of startups has been growing, representing renewed interest in food security, and racial and economic justice.
Food co-ops are not alone in their contribution to more inclusive and resilient communities and empowered workers. From farmer co-ops to worker co-ops, credit unions to mutual insurance, and housing co-ops to energy co-ops, co-operative businesses thrive across the U.S. economy, where one in three people are co-op members. Around the world, around 1 billion people are members of about 3 million co-operatives, and 10% of the world’s population—or around 280 million people—are employed by co-ops. And because they are member-owned, co-operatives are rooted in their communities and governed by the people who use them to meet their needs.
Here in Vallejo and Benicia, we see clearly how our food co-op, CCFC, will fill a huge need in our community by providing healthy, fresh food choices, good local jobs, and by keeping the store profits here in our towns instead of going to a big corporate office somewhere else. We can work together to make our community stronger, more inclusive, and resilient.
Sources: https://betterworld.coop/sectors/; https://nfca.coop/co-opmonth/
#CoopMonth #CoopsBuildEconomicPower