Tune in to WOL 1450 AM, 95.9 FM, and WOL Livestream on November 30 at 10:30 am EST for Everything Co-op, hosted by Vernon Oakes.
This week, Everything Co-op launches its Inaugural Everything Co-op List, a thoughtfully curated list of products and services from the cooperative community. We intend to put into practice the principle of Cooperation Among Cooperatives. In our first installment, Vernon will introduce you to his picks for your body and soul. Dina Omar, founder of Palestinian Soap Cooperative, and LaKeisha Wolf, Executive Director of Ujamaa Collective, will introduce you to their products and wear. Vernon and his guests will discuss how they engage with and support the community.
LaKeisha Wolf is a co-founder and serves as executive director of the non-profit Ujamaa Collective. She leads through the lens of creativity and community, working with artists and organizers to develop place-making strategies and models of equity for community resources, as well as local and global partnerships rooted in the values of fair trade entrepreneurship, mutual aid, and wellness. As a community cultural worker and teaching artist, LaKeisha provides support and workshops in culturally responsive arts and wellness practices and cooperative enterprise development. Ujamaa Collective is a grassroots organization that works to center Black/Africana people within a cooperative economics practice. provides a cooperative retail boutique for makers and artists to connect with conscientious consumers.
Dina Omar founded the Palestinian Soap Cooperative in 2021. She is from the village of Rammun, Palestine, and grew up using Nablus soap—pure olive oil soap based on the world’s first soap making tradition. One of the motivations structuring the cooperative are the basic economic lessons taught by her entrepreneur father: the key is to offer the best quality for the most affordable price. Dina is a graduate of Yale and Berkeley, and a former teacher with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People. She was a founder of National Students for Justice in Palestine and is an active member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective. Palestinian Soap Cooperative is a cooperative, or democratically run and mutually owned, distributor of traditional Palestinian olive oil soap. The co-op promotes this historic and wonderful product and manages orders in the U.S. market for three soap factories in Nablus.
