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International
Community-Building Models
A
broad range of new forms of significant scale, community-benefitting
economic entities are active throughout Asia, Africa, Europe
and the Americas. These little-studied community-based asset
building experiments occur in a variety of forms: hybrid consumer-producer
enviro-cooperatives, community-owned and -operated businesses,
new local municipal enterprises, alternative financial institutions,
nonprofit businesses, worker-owned firms, public-private and
government-community partnerships, and more.
The most
innovative and far-reaching among them are locally-anchored
models that empower people and build communities not only
by producing jobs and improving equity, but by structurally
embedding or "rooting" economic assets (such as capital, land
and natural resources) in institutions which are accountable
to the community. Many models, particularly in developing
countries, combine community asset building with local responsibility
for sustainable resource management. Most models also share
in common a consideration for social values in addition to
profit, and fostering popular, democratic participation in
decision-making. Distinct from more traditional, one-off development
projects funded by bilateral and multilateral aid agencies,
many of these institutional developments are distinguished
by having reached significant and sustainable levels of economic
expertise, experience, skills and technology. Their four central
characteristics may be defined as: (1) significant scale;
(2) some form of "embeddedness" in community-based institutions;
(3) a focus on developing assets that are in some way collectively
held within the community; and (4) some capacity to help conserve
and manage the local natural resource base on a sustainable
basis.
Among the
many innovations the National Center is surveying are:
- AMUL
Dairy Cooperative (India)
- Cheticamp
(Canada)
- Curitiba
(Brazil)
- Federation
of Free Farmers (Philippines)
- Fundacion
Social (Colombia)
- Grameen
Enterprises (Bangladesh)
- Kagiso
Trust (South Africa)
- Mondragon
(Spain)
- OPAP
(Zimbabwe)
- Seikatsu
Club Consumers Cooperative (Japan)
- Van
City (Canada)
In moving
to levels of scale, these innovations have developed along
a number of pathways:
- For
some, the starting point is community-level economic development.
Some innovative community development corporations in the
United States, for example—and their analogues abroad—have
moved squarely into programs designed to build capital and
asset ownership within the community.
- Another
approach adopted by large-scale (million member) enviro-consumer
cooperatives in Japan has succeeded in generating markets
and then moving back to control of production.
- A third
approach is being pioneered in Canada, where large-scale
worker cooperatives are taking over government service delivery
as an alternative to privatization.
- Still
another avenue, illustrated by the Spanish worker cooperative
Mondragon and other worker-owned co-ops and businesses,
starts with production and moves outward into the community.
- A fifth
little-studied strategy begins at the level of municipal
government. In many cities, local governments are quietly
establishing business enterprises—particularly in such
urban environmental areas as waste management, energy production
and water and sanitation. These in turn generate revenues
which are plowed back into city services and community-building
efforts.
Of particular
interest is how various enterprises have gotten beyond the
modest scale common in many U.S. experiments. In Japan, for
instance, more than a million citizens are organized on a
block-by-block basis as part of the democratic decision-making
structure of some consumer cooperatives. In Bangladesh, millions
of people participate in the many programs of Grameen Enterprises.
More than 40,000 workers are employed by the Mondragon cooperative
in Spain. Colombia's Fundacion Social has assets of $2.7 billion.
Understanding
how—precisely and practically—these efforts have developed
along various and diverse paths into institutions that produce
serious economic activity, increase equity, achieve environmental
goals and spread asset ownership within the community can
provide a wealth of relevant experience and data of value
to many other communities, including within the United States.
The larger scale models could prove particularly important
given the new pressures which globalization is generating
around the world.
Other
Models & Innovations include:
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