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On Cooperationby Nate Horwitz Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what we're supposed to be doing here at the Honest Weight Food Coop. Two good places to start are the Coop's mission statement and the cooperative principles. (You can find these online at www.honestweight.coop/About/index.html , or just ask me for one and I'll give you a copy.) The fifth principle is education, training, and information, the text of which I'll reprint here: "Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute to the development of their Cooperatives. They inform the general public-particularly young people and opinion leaders-about the nature of benefits of Cooperation." With this in mind, I'm starting a new column for the Coop Scoop called "Reflecting on Cooperation," and in this space I hope to do several things. I'd like to explore the history of our Coop as well as the history of the coop movement. I'd like to talk about what other coop's are doing, so we can think about what we do well and where we can improve, and I'd like to discuss the benefits of cooperation. I've got a list of topics that I'd like to cover for the near future, but I'm always open to suggestions. Please let me know if you've got ideas for topics that should be covered. To kick off the new column, and to help revive interest in the cooperative movement, we're planning a series about cooperatives here at Honest Weight this April. The series will be coordinated by Lorre Smith, who coordinates the Health & Wellness Series. We're looking now for people who are interested in participating in our panel discussions. Some of the topics we hope to cover are "An Overview of the Coop Movement," "Honest Weight Food Coop Today," "Cooperative Distribution in the U.S.," and "Common Cooperative Institutions." This series will only be as good as the people who participate, so please join us if you think you have something interesting to add. By next month's Coop Scoop, we hope to have the schedule fairly well set. See you there! |
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