Building Community Wealth: joining the democratic economy.

Description du cours

For hundreds of years, dissatisfaction with standard top-down corporate structures has inspired many people to form more local, inclusive, and democratic ways of organizing enterprise. Today, these include cooperatives, worker-owned businesses, community non-profits, social enterprise and more. Over the last 20 years, a method of local economic development called Community Wealth Building (CWB) has connected the lessons and practices of these initiatives and turned them into a systemic alternative to the huge inequality generated by mainstream economic development. CWB has been used around the world to invest in underprivileged groups, reduce poverty, strengthen community, and grow local economic democracy. Increasingly, it is being used to combat climate change as well and is cited by Kate Raworth of Donut Economics as core methodology for living within the “donut” of an ecologically sustainable economy.

This week-long mini course will explore the five pillars of Community Wealth Building:
1) Inclusive ownership
2) Fair work
3) Locally rooted finance
4) Just use of land and property
5) Progressive spending

This will be a CREATIVE exploration: participants will choose an initiative to make their local economy more democratic and sustainable and will collaboratively develop strategies towards achieving it. They will be introduced to actions individuals and small groups can take to participate in the democratic economy: joining a credit union, investing in a community bond, becoming a member of a community land trust, starting a worker-owned cooperative business with friends, and more. They will reconsider how big “anchor institutions”—including their schools, hospitals, religious institutions, and local government—can better strategize and partner to build more democratic local economies. They will be exposed to a range of potential career paths and educational opportunities that are geared towards building community wealth. Ultimately they will brainstorm, collaborate, and propose creative ideas to build democratic wealth in their own communities.