Join the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund October 14-16 for CoopEcon 2021, taking place virtually from 9 am-12 pm CDT each day.

CoopEcon is an education and training conference designed to help current and future cooperators to build new and strengthen existing community-based enterprises in their communities.

Register now

Cooperative economic development puts power back in the hands of communities that have been abandoned by decades of wrongheaded policymaking, enabling them to take charge of creating more just economic conditions for themselves and their communities. This approach to economics empowers people to build back cooperatively.

This week on Everything Co-op, Stacey Sutton discusses her solidarity economy research and Chicago’s community wealth building initiatives

North Carolina’s cooperative ecosystem is building inclusive, equitable and resilient communities

Unlike other economic development that looks to offering incentives to attract good jobs and desired amenities from outside the community, cooperative economic development leverages democratic ownership and governance of community assets to create enterprises that will meet the needs of people and raise their quality of life. During CoopEcon, you’ll learn how to organize with other community members to envision, design, plan, finance, build and then successfully govern cooperative enterprises that are owned by the community for the benefit of the community.

The Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, now in its 52nd year, assists limited-resource farmers, landowners and cooperatives across the U.S. South with business planning, debt restructuring, marketing expertise and a range of other services to ensure the retention of land ownership and cooperatives as a tool for social and economic justice. The federation’s overall mission is to reverse the trend of black land loss and be a catalyst for the development of self-supporting communities via cooperative economic development, land retention and advocacy.