Gate Forty
Informal Group
Cooperatives for Youth Participation – YoFest 2015
Brussels, Belgium – This year the 6th Yo!fest edition, organised by the European Youth Forum (YFJ) as usual, has gathered Seven thousand young people from across Europe.
Many activities, debates, workshops and live music took place in order to give young Europeans an opportunity of interaction. We attended the seminar Cooperatives for Youth Participation – Members not only Shareholders. Representatives from several cooperatives such as Ecopower (Dann Creupelandt), Coopname (Julia Schorestene), and BeesCoop (Enrico de Sanso), were invited to raise awareness on the increasingly opportunities that Cooperatives are giving nowadays to young people.
Youth political and civic participation are of utmost importance for developing a the society, and business is a crucial tool for increasing young generations potential. The outbreak of the financial crisis has increased youth unemployment; on the other hand, it has nevertheless determined the development of alternative models of business such as cooperatives.
These above mentioned entrepreneurs explained how the meaning of cooperative is naturally connected to participation, and shared their experiences.
Cooperatives seem to offer a valid alternative to respond to job insecurity. Hence, according to the statistics one of five people in Europe are members of a cooperative. They are based on three pillars, which correspond to the essence and are as follows: participation, sharing, and variety.
The first aspect lies in the fact that Cooperatives exist to serve their members, whether they are customers, employees or producer. The members are the owners, with an equal say in what the cooperative does. In other words, members participate equally in shaping the decisions their cooperatives make.
Yet, Cooperatives work for trading successfully, and sharing the profit is a way to keep it fair and make it worthwhile. So a cooperative shares its profits amongst the members, rather than rewarding outside investors. Ultimately, Cooperatives represent a different way of conceiving business, privileging the current and future benefit of the community.
They may have different types and sizes: small companies owned by employees, large banks owned by clients and so forth. They work in all parts of economy such as healthcare, housing, farms, pharmacies, supermarkets, sports club, bakeries, insurance, and internet services.
Finally, Cooperatives certainly provide a breakthrough in this situation of crisis and general mistrust, giving a human face to a society that seems to hand over to a frentic business self interest oriented to the decline.
Links
Coopaname
Ecopower
Bees Coop
