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Catalyzing worker co-ops & the solidarity economy

Collaborating to Advance Justice for Women: Solidago Foundation

Historically, solidarity economy is a term used in the global South to describe anti-capitalist innovations emerging from a desire for self-determination. Typically, the concept includes models such as community land trusts, worker cooperatives, community-supported agriculture, food cooperatives, community gardens, housing cooperatives, credit unions, barter networks, time banks, and cooperative loan funds, among others. Women form a disproportionately large percentage of the people engaged in forging and sustaining solidarity economies globally and in the United States, often as a response to discrimination and abuse in the larger economy.

Solidago Foundation was among the first funders to support organizations explictly focused on the solidarity economy, starting with the United States Solidarity Economy Network in 2009, based in the fund’s home region of Western Massachussetts. Since then, this commitment has grown to include the Solidarity Economy Initiative, a collaboration among eight funders to grow economic democracy in Massachussetts. To date the fund has provided $425,000 to fifteen groups, supporting the Boston Community Land Trust Network to create affordable housing land trusts, the Boston Ujima Project to provide a community-governed capital fund for new enterprises, and the Massachusetts Jobs not Jails campaign for prison divestment and investment in ex-prisoner co-op enterprises. The Solidarity Economy Initiative has also raised $500,000 to invest into revenue-generating enterprises like cooperatives.
 

Read the rest at Philanthropy Women

 

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