Tune into WOL 1450 AM, 95.9 FM or the WOL Livestream on Thursday, June 11 at 10:30 a.m. EST for Everything Co-op, hosted by Vernon Oakes.
This week, Everything Co-op features D.G. Safeer Hopton, founder and board chair of Global Village Co-op and author of Creating a Co-op Village: How Real World Co-op Businesses Build Wealth and Thriving Communities.
This episode will explore how cooperative ownership creates pathways to economic empowerment, community wealth and long-term sustainability. Drawing from more than five decades of experience, D.G. Safeer will share lessons from the cooperative movement and discuss how co-op enterprises can help communities thrive in today’s economy.
D.G. Safeer Hopton is a lifelong cooperative innovator whose work has helped shape cooperative housing, finance and community-based economic development for more than 50 years. His cooperative journey began in 1970 with the Mutual Ownership Development Foundation (MODF), where he helped develop a landmark cooperative housing and shopping center project known as Co-op Village in Pasadena, California—the concept that later inspired his book.
Throughout the 1970s, Mr. Hopton worked with some of the nation’s most prominent cooperatives, gaining firsthand insight into the opportunities and challenges facing cooperative enterprises. His expertise led California Congressman Don Edwards to recommend him as a consultant to the National Consumer Cooperative Bank, which became National Cooperative Bank (NCB) in 1985 and is a longtime sponsor of Everything Co-op.
Mr. Hopton later collaborated with NCB’s retail banking subsidiary to develop innovative consumer rewards programs and financial technology solutions. Today, as founder and board chair of the Global Village Co-op, he continues his mission of helping communities build lasting wealth through cooperative ownership, innovation and economic self-determination.