The New Economy Coalition’s Movement Support Program is one of the organization’s longest-running and established efforts. Since 2013, the program has provided resources and support for over 90 projects led by youth and frontline organizations doing transformative work away from the extractive economy and towards more just, democratic, and sustainable economies.
BCCO provides organizing support for worker-owned cooperatives started by low income people — primarily immigrants, people of color, and those with barriers to employment. Funds will support our work by covering the costs of staff time spent serving these co-ops and helping them survive the current crisis.
DAYUM is a youth run organization based in Detroit, MI. We are made up of primarily poor and working class youth, majority youth of color and queer youth. Our membership historically provides direct action and community organizing support to other youth who are facing injustices or fighting for policy changes in their community. Funds will expand DAYUM’s care kit project, assisting youth in paying grocery bills if they are experiencing food insecurity, provide stipends to youth and adult allies who are facilitating and coordinating care kit drop-offs, and continue to provide quality mental health support to metro Detroit youth.
Editorial Casa Cuna is an independent artistic project, based in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico. This project is conceived as an alternative method for emerging artists that are womxn, poor, black and / or from LGBTTQIAP+ communities to create income with their art. Funds will help establish Editorial Casa Cuna’s main office and workshop space through the purchase of construction materials to begin the second phase of their next project, TRANScomunidá.
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El Departamento de la Comida is a collectively run alternative agency for small farmers in Puerto Rico. Based in the small rural agricultural community in Caguas, El Departamento focuses on supporting agroecological practices, queer community, and regenerative food systems that decolonize our land, shift from agro-industry to agro-culture through a tailor-made food hub. With the funds, El Departamento will be able to keep their new space and pay the rent on time, as well as provide their four team members with a $900 stipend during this crisis.
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Escuela Itinerante Celestina Cordero is a small collective based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, that offers free training and popular education on anti-racism, transformative economies, and transfeminist principles. They create safe, healing spaces that are intergenerational and offer childcare. With the funds, Escuela Itinerante will be able to launch online popular education workshops and provide stipends for their team.
Food for the Spirit is an organization dedicated to racial healing towards ecological justice and equitable food systems. Using creative facilitation, they craft spaces for people to learn from each other and step into leadership roles honoring their unique talents, perspectives, and abilities. Funds will allow Food for the Spirit to bring materials for building garden beds to 15 - 50 more Buffalo residents.
Pecan Milk Cooperative is a non-incubated 100% working class, LGBTQIAP and Black-owned cooperative which manages every aspect of the pecan milk manufacturing business. Their goal is to create dignified income for folks in their Southern communities. Funds will support the survival of the cooperative during this prolonged crisis.
As an urban farm in St. Louis, Missouri, PHI Global teaches various groups in low income areas how to grow food through sustainable gardening practices. They also supply nutritious and fresh food to this particular population that needs it more because of the scarcity in the area. Funds will support the purchase of 30 horse power tractor with attachments, seeds, labor, irrigation, greenhouse supplies, and plastic mulch to expand their growing capacity in response to the growing need caused by the crisis.
Repaired Nations creates redress for historic trends of colonization and oppression through cooperative training and development for collective ownership in Oakland, California. Initially focused on building wealth in Black communities by giving youth the tools needed to remain rooted: access to land and access to capital; they also host bookclubs, workshops, and trainings to educate and inspire communities to engage in cooperative effort - all while giving grounded, practical skills for collective ownership. Funds will support the intended purchase of two properties in Oakland which will bring 15K square feet of commercial space and 5+ residential units into their cooperative network.
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The Sol2Soul Freedom Project is a community based Arts & Agricultural Cooperative in Puerto Rico, doing liberation work rooted in long-term agricultural economic sustainability, land reclamation, and arts activism. This project includes working with three local schools to develop a youth food sovereignty curriculum, developing an agricultural production site, and community land trust planning. Funds will support local farmers providing produce and plant medicine in under resourced communities on the west side of the island.
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Solidarity Economy St. Louis is a network of groups and individuals striving to build and grow a solidarity economy that embodies the values of justice, sustainability, self-determination, and cooperation. Funds will help pay local artists and entrepreneurs in the network to offer their art or products into care packages along with food and other necessities distributed by STL Mutual Aid to those families requesting support.
The mission of the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development is to increase economic opportunities and benefits by creating and strengthening cooperative businesses and networks that grow an equitable economy. They give priority to developing the power and capacity of low-income, minority individuals, and underserved areas of Metro Nashville and beyond. Funds would help SEC4CD seed their Emergency Fund and give the center an opportunity to raise matching or additional funds to support small businesses owned by or employing people of color which are financially impacted by the latest economic downturn through COVID-19 and the recent severe weather events.
Tightshift Laboring Cooperative is a worker-owned laboring business and DC’s first worker-owned cooperative business founded by returning citizens. Funds will be used for the development of Stellar Roots, a farm community in Virginia, where a collective of Black working class folks are living, fixing up infrastructure, holding learning workshops, and growing their own food and medicines. The collective and those who are housed there are predominantly Black women and girls.
Worcester Roots is a collective of youth and adult organizers on a mission to create opportunities for economic, social and environmental justice. We send these roots of opportunity into our communities, sprouting up co-operatively run and green projects and initiatives that build toward our vision of neighborhoods that are safe for living, working and playing. Funds would help seed resourcing of three people of color-led cooperatives who were incubated through Worceter Roots Cooperative Academy:Global Village Farms, WooRidesand Black Seed Farmers Market.
AWITSC’s mission is to ignite social change through the power of the arts, culture, restorative self expression, and community storytelling. They’re using arts-based community storytelling to ask local youth “How would you spend a million dollars?” This process is meant to build momentum and infrastructure for a participatory budgeting process in Asheville.
BCCO provides organizing support for worker-owned cooperatives started by low income people — primarily immigrants, people of color, and those with barriers to employment. BCCO's new bilingual peer training platform will allow worker co-ops to train each other and access training from professional co-op support organizations at a discounted rate.
CCDS provides educational, technical and organizational support to groups that want to explore the creation of worker-owned cooperatives in East Boston. CCDS’s Cooperative Institute program contributes to the cooperative movement ecosystem by supporting the Latin@ immigrant community while transforming individuals, organizations, and neighborhoods through participatory processes and popular education in Spanish.
The Cooperative Economics Alliance of NYC (CEANYC) strengthens and expands community-led, democratically-controlled initiatives — from worker, financial and consumer co-ops to community land trusts and gardens, mutual housing, and low-income housing co-ops. To learn to better facilitate participatory spaces, they’ll work with Training for Change to bring their Training for Social Action Trainers to NYC for our Board, peer educators, staff, donor organizers, and member leaders.
Editorial Casa Cuna is an independent artistic project, based in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico. This project is conceived as an alternative method for emerging artists that are womxn, poor, black and / or from LGBTTQIAP+ communities to create income with their art. They focus on creating events and providing resources to obtain greater representation of marginalized minorities in the contemporary art scene of Puerto Rico. La Juntilla, their first Art and Literature Festival, will celebrate LGBTQ+, queer, black, anarchist, and feminist artists from Puerto Rico and give them a non-censored/ non-discriminating space to share their work.
Firelands WA builds multiracial working-class power in rural and small-town Timber Country in Washington State to fight for a regenerative economy through the vehicle of a just Green New Deal. They are building an organization driven by working-class and poor communities across race directly impacted by the daily crises of poverty and climate change. They spent the summer listening, and are launching our growth phase with a series of forums and a movement school in the Fall.
Food for the Spirit is an organization dedicated to racial healing towards ecological justice and equitable food systems. Using creative facilitation, they craft spaces for people to learn from each other and step into leadership roles honoring their unique talents, perspectives, and abilities. The vision for Food for the Spirit's 2020 Youth Leadership Retreat is to support participating youth leaders and adult mentors in Buffalo, NY in planning and facilitating future workshops and trainings in their own communities.
Groundwork Buffalo will partner with Gro-Operative to teach youth and young adults in the City of Buffalo how to produce fresh herbs, greens and fish year-round as a worker-owned vertical farming cooperative. They will maximize production and minimize waste by using cutting-edge technology and innovative practices. By operating as a worker-owned company they will demonstrate the contribution of worker cooperatives to a more equitable, democratic and sustainable world.
The Kola Nut Collaborative is Chicago-based time and skills service exchange which presently serves as an incubator and point of intersection for several actors throughout Chicago's solidarity economy. Cooperation 4 Liberation is an intentional gathering space to study the Black radical tradition of cooperative and solidarity economic practice and harvest contemporary strategies for countering economic marginalization as resistance and liberation.
PGI seeks to accelerate the world’s shift to an economy that thrives within ecological limits, and promote the importance of monetary circulation for economic regeneration, social justice, and ecological sustainability. The online Offers and Needs Market is a 90-minute meeting to efficiently match knowledge, skills, resources, and needs of new economy organizations.
New Economy Works West Virginia (NEW WV) provides business development resources and financing for groups forming worker or producer cooperatives. NEW WV is developing a cooperative culture in the Westside community of Charleston, WV, to carry out New Economy projects that will allow the community to take charge of revitalization efforts and self-determine their future.
The Sol2Soul Freedom Project is a community based Arts & Agricultural Cooperative in Puerto Rico, doing liberation work rooted in long-term agricultural economic sustainability, land reclamation, and arts activism. This project includes working with three local schools to develop a youth food sovereignty curriculum, developing an agricultural production site, and community land trust planning.
Solidarity Economy St. Louis is a network of groups and individuals striving to build and grow a solidarity economy that embodies the values of justice, sustainability, self-determination, and cooperation. This project is to develop a Youth Council, which will provide space for young people under 25 to direct and lead their work, bring more youth into their community, and learn from each other and mentors in whatever areas they are interested in, while being compensated accordingly.
The mission of the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development is to increase economic opportunities and benefits by creating and strengthening cooperative businesses and networks that grow an equitable economy. They give priority to developing the power and capacity of low-income, minority individuals, and underserved areas of Metro Nashville and beyond. They seek to create a loan coordinator position for a non-extractive loan fund that supports worker co-op start-ups with formerly incarcerated women, low-income individuals, people of color, youth, immigrants and support for a worker cooperative and conversion conference in Nashville, TN.
Wild Fig Books & Coffee is Kentucky's first and only Black-owned bookstore. Currently undergoing conversion to a worker cooperative, the Fig is a radical bookstore, coffee shop, and community event space that centers holding space for grassroots cultural organizing and healing justice that is a critical component of solidifying and strengthening the local solidarity economy movement.
“Born in Havana, Cuba, AfroRazones is a transnational solidarity project aimed towards educating artists and creating an alternative music industry infrastructure. Through music collaborations, workshop series and live events, AfroRazones creates south-south circuitry to support independent Latin American artists. This grant will support the creation of a week-long workshop series that will educate Caribbean, Black, and Latino artists in Santo Domingo about the global music industry. “
“Caderamen is born out of the interest of its founders to advance strategies for safe births in Puerto Rico. During three years and until 2017, SePARE, one of Caderamen's programs, offered services in the Municipality of Vega Baja to more than 800 families in their prenatal and postpartum stage. Our goal is to reach accessible sexual and reproductive health for families and their communities when reducing inequalities and improving surrounding environments through family planning, and health services for women and children and training for professionals.”
“The Center for Popular Economics (CPE) is a nonprofit collective of political economists based in Amherst, MA. Since our founding in 1979, thousands of people have participated in our workshops and Institutes. We are supporting (F)empower, an artist collective and community to empower femmes in South Florida. It taps into a new generation of emerging femme artists living and creating online and provides spaces for them to collaborate, learn, unlearn, teach, showcase and play.”
CoFED is building a cooperative food economy, powered by the visionary leadership of young people of color. We partner with young people of color to practice cooperative values and economics through food and land.
“Cooperativa de Trabajo Cabachuelas (CABACOOP) is a workers-coop for heritage interpreters in Morovis Puerto Rico. Proyecto Cabachuelas is a community-based project about sustainable tourism and education for Las Cabachuelas Nature Reserve in Morovis. We created CABACOOP a workers-coop to sustain our efforts towards a participatory management plan for our natural and social resources.”
“DAYUM's mission is to fight for a seat at the table for marginalized youth in decision making about our lives and communities in Detroit. Whether we are addressing lead and copper in our school water fountains, gun violence, or education justice we believe that our voices matter. We work intersectionally on issues of economic inequity, racism, homophobia, and ageism. DAYUM's Political Education space will be open to all high school students to host classes, meetings, and events. We will create a space that is welcoming, surveillance free, and non-hierarchical to learn, create, and grow as young activists.”
“El Departamento de la Comida is a non-profit, non-government collective for the advancement of sustainable, resilient, and regenerative food projects in Puerto Rico. #QueNoSePierdaLaSemilla is a campaign to mobilize farmers and consumers around collective, coordinated seed saving in Puerto Rico. The campaign calls for building seed libraries and oral history archives, to share skills and agricultural practices.”
“The Pecan Milk Co-Op consists of Black, Queer and Trans young people who prioritize liberation and value life. In opposition of oppression, we seek to create dignified work for all, especially those who identify as Black, Brown, POC, Non- white, Queer, Trans, Women, Femmes, Youth, People with disabilities, migrant and immigrant folx. We create this work via our dairy free milk products. Pecan Milk Co-op is a worker cooperative manufacturing dairy-free foods to make dignified work for oppressed communities in the South.”
“We are a group of grassroots organizers, teachers and advocates focusing on the educational aspects of urban farming in St Louis. Our 2019 goal is to continue working with schools and youth organizations teaching the basics of urban farming. We are now in the process of opening our first farmer's market. We also are in the process of establishing an Urban Farm School.”
“Repaired Nations is a cooperative education and technical assistance provider whose ultimate goal is to create a thriving, regenerative cooperative ecosystem for the African Diaspora. We are democratically run by a project lead and leadership cohort comprised of multi-talented artists and facilitators. As we educate communities through book clubs and workshops, we develop partnerships and gather resources for frontline communities to cooperatively develop themselves.”
“We are Worcester Youth Co-op. Our age group ranges from 14 to 19, and are all either sophomores and juniors in high school. We are all a part of the lower income Worcester area. We were interested in the idea of being worker-owners while building power with the community we live in. Worcester Youth Co-op works to inspire youth leadership while providing local communities with ethical cooperative goods and services.”
“We are a small group of creative people who reside within close proximity of each other, in the Greater Ville and Fountain Park Neighborhoods of North Saint Louis. We have worked in collaboration, in multiple facets and share the common goal of sharing information on preventative health care, using art and sustainable living as the foundation. We are uplifting creative and sustainable living as a way to engage in preventative healthcare. Our cultural arts campaign highlights wellness, in an area that has been stigmatized as unwell. The legacy of American Greats from North Saint Louis still lives on.”
The program launched in 2013, by supporting new economy conferences and gatherings on campuses across the country. In addition to grant funding, NEC staff traveled to every event to offer hands-on support to student organizing efforts.
In 2014, we disbursed $55,000 to young people imagining and building a new economy, both on campuses and in community organizations. We made twice the number of grants as we did in 2013, supporting more than 30 projects, campaigns, and convenings across the US and Canada.
In 2015, we regranted a total of $50,000. Additionally, we expanded the “Youth and Student” umbrella and solicited grant proposals from organizations on the frontlines of the extractive economy and community-led solutions, an area that shares considerable overlap with our range of current grantees. Supporting emergent new economic practice and movements is central to our work as an organization, and we are excited to continue funding projects at the cutting edge of building an economy that works for everyone.
In 2016, we gave grants to 14 organizations, ranging from broad national networks to organizations deeply rooted in their locality. We continued to support both youth and frontline organizations. We supported new initiatives focused on rural and international solidarity organizing, as well as continuing to resource returning grantees.
In 2017-2018, we transitioned leadership and decision-making to a committee of past grantees and active NEC members. We practiced democratic decision-making over the regranting budget and allocated $44,000 over the course of two rounds of grant-making.
In 2019, we expanded the program to be called NEC Movement Support, with a broader focus on leveraging the resources of NEC's 200 organization network in service of building the new economy movement. We allocated $40,000 to 28 youth and frontline community groups.
In 2020, we are shifting to rapid response grant-making to meet the urgent needs of the COVID-19 crisis. We are seeking to increase the amount of funding we are able to provide by encouraging new donors to support solidarity economy grassroots organizers.
