Are you: a neighborhood or community organizer in the Chicago area? seeking to develop your facilitation skills for working with groups? interested in building skills within an international learning community? wanting to build relationships with others involved in their community through a shared learning experience? The Time Salon: An Offers & Needs Market Orientation Are you interested in the Offers …
During the past three years of research and public engagement, there have been several tools which have proven useful in helping me grapple with the practicality and possibility of timebanking. Our key offering, The Time Salon, was born of a desire to create a space where communities could engage in conversations about how they might best see a time-based skills …
During the summer of 2018, a small contingent of organizers within Chicago DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) developed a Working Group committed to the task of incubating and facilitating neighborhood level democratic assemblies with the goal of empowering the voices of local residents and citizens in the total governance of their communities. Unlike the institutions offered in our representative democracy, …
Thus far in 2019, we have hosted conversations with Danielle Mkali of Nexus Community Partners, Me’lea Connelly of Village Financial Cooperative, LaTierra Piphus of Womanist Working Collective, Dara Cooper of National Black Food & Justice Alliance, Jamila Medley of Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance, and Deon Lucas of E.G. Woode. This follows on the heels of launching near the close of …
During a Summit for Solutions hosted on Chicago’s West Side, Kola Community Solutions was tapped to research and present to community leaders a cooperative housing strategy to address the displacement and diminished affordability impacting many of their area residents. While our primary focus was consolidating key research points into a visually appealing, general purpose pitch deck, this project presented an …
In the fall of 2018, the Kola Nut Collaborative partnered with BRIJ Embassy for Black America in order to develop a commentary and interview segment broadcast within the online community, BEBA, which would deepen member awareness of several cooperative economic strategies employed within Black communities in historical and contemporary times. Below are the five initial segments produced during this partnership. Four …
Having completed shared readings of “Collective Courage” and “Jackson Rising”, we are breaking from the Study Group to develop projects which have been proposed by the Working Group including a forum, zine, gallery, and web series. Over the course of 12 weeks, a core group of participants have endeavored to make deep study and exchange thoughts about Dr. Jessica Gordon …
“As worker cooperatives create living wage employment opportunities for low and moderate- income and marginalized workers, IWCA believes that fostering the growth of the worker cooperative ecosystem is the single most important thing that the City of Chicago, Cook County, and the State of Illinois can do to address worker exploitation and inequality, while promoting economic stability and community wealth …
“In regionally diverse and digitally advanced economies – whether local, national or sectoral – there is no one-size-fits-all money. What is more, though money evolves along with social and technological changes, it must not be forgotten that people ultimately control its path. In towns, regions and online networks people have quietly been creating their own currencies for decades: testament to …
“Our public services remain largely focused on addressing needs once they have emerged. In essence, over the last 10 years due to increased funding in public service we have improved our capacity to ‘pull people out of the river’. This money has improved the lives of many people, but as financial resources are squeezed it becomes vital that we stop …