Worcester Roots is holding a media event / cookout / general assembly, where members of Future Focus Media and Worcester Roots board will speak and where community members can get involved in planning, share ideas, and help organize the next economy. This event will be held:
5pm, May 5th at Stone Soup Community Center, 4 King st, Worcester, MA.
Worcester Roots Launches Co-operative Business, Creating Good Jobs
Future Focus Media Co-op, a new video, graphic design, and website building company with a mission to train youth and tell positive stories about Worcester grassroots organizations has formally launched as its own employee cooperative corporation. It has been operating for three years with the “incubation” support of Worcester Roots with about 4 employees. Now, having incorporated independently, it will grow to create 6 permanent jobs where employee owners can build equity in the company and run it democratically.
With the aim of creating good community-owned jobs, Worcester Roots and ally organizations are launching a “We Own It” campaign. This project includes a poster distribution strategy, public education information series, and an intensive business planning training called the Co-op Academy.
Worcester Roots is working towards an economy that works for everyone, one based in worker co-operatives and community ownership.
Our post-industrial mid-sized city is strategically poised to have an upswell of mission-based, creative co-op enterprises to fill old factory buildings, empty lots and community needs. Worcester Roots is giving this movement the boost it needs to achieve a critical mass of co-ops that can support each other and be sustainable. Worcester Roots and Worcester Solidarity And Green Economy (SAGE) Alliance have already created a growing network of co-operatives and support groups, as is graphically represented on the SAGE website: www.WorcesterSAGEalliance.org.
Worcester Roots Project incubates worker co-ops and builds infrastructure to support cooperative ventures. We can determine the direction of our own lives. This is our community, our economy, the peoples’ economy—We Own It! In addition to launching Future Focus Media Co-op, Worcester Roots is working with a youth co-op training program, Toxic Soil Busters, and two worker co-ops in formation: Diggers Landscaping Co-op and the Aquaponics Greenhouse Co-op.
Co-ops are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.
The We Own It worker-co-op campaign is community driven—community voices, community interests, community needs. We need your contributions to build critical organizational capacity for this transformative work.
As part of the We Own It Campaign, Worcester Roots Project is organizing a 4th Co-Op Academy. Worcester Roots and the Worcester Solidarity And Green Economy (SAGE) Alliance educate the public about co-operative businesses by holding information sessions and media events.