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Women's Sewing Co-op Cocokiof Kigali, RwandaEmelienne Nyiramana, now 37, used to fetch water fora living, walking 17 kilometers from her home in Kigaliand earning 25 cents on each trip to provide for herfamily of six. She didn’t have a bank account, andschool fees and groceries for her four children werenever certainties. Now, Emelienne earns more than $5a day running a profitable export business, enough notonly to feed her family and pay for her children’s schoolfees, but to deposit the remainder in a savings account.The turning point was in 2007. “Me and my fellowwomen who shared the same problem of povertydecided to start a cooperative with the help of anorganization who found us, Indego Africa,” Emeliennesaid. Theirs was the first group of artisan women topartner with the non-profit, whose long-term approachtowards lifting African women out of poverty wasthrough a combination of

fair trade partnerships (members of the all-women for-profit co-operatives they partner with get a fair wagethat includes 50% in advance of production),international exports, and training programs.Emelienne’s sewing co-operative, Cocoki (Cooperativede Couture de Kicukiro), now includes 40 women whouse foot-powered sewing machines and coal-poweredirons to craft vibrantly-colored bags, fabric-wrappedbracelets, and wrap-skirts using traditional wax prints.On their fifth year, they’ve fulfilled orders for large U.S.fashion brands including Nicole Miller andAnthropologie, and are currently finishing production ona large scale order for J.Crew for their Spring/Summer2012 collection. Profits are used to have fund programsin English literacy, and training in computers,management and accounting. “All members of Cocokihave a dream. Their dream is to become rich from theirhands,” Emelienne said.

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Women's Sewing Co-op Cocoki ofKigali, Rwanda27 February 2012by Ratha Tep

Cooperative deCouture de Kicukiro

Consumer40

40Website | Facebook

Description of the co-operative:A women’s sewing cooperative inKigali, Rwanda, that produceshandicrafts for export to large fashionbrands in the U.S. that have includedNicole Miller, Anthropologie and J.Crew.

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Miel Mexicana VolcanPopocatépetlWhen the Miel Mexicana Volcan Popocatépetl cooperative was founded in 2001, itsmembers produced just 3 tonnes of honey. Now it exports over 500 tonnes of certifiedorganic and fair-trade honey to 10 different countries every year.Though the cooperative works in ten Mexican states, it is based in Morelos, in southernMexico, and most of its beekeepers work in the foothills of the snow-cappedPopocatépetl volcano, Mexico’s second-highest peak. Though traditionally a honey-producing area, the local honey was not always very high quality, and was oftencontaminated by toxic residues and antibiotics given to the bees.In contrast, the Miel Mexicana Volcán Popocatépetl cooperative has been certifiedorganic since 2004, and has always worked hard to make sure its 42 members produceonly the highest quality honey. Nine different types are produced from local plants—sunflower, chamomile, mesquite, orange, avocado, cactus, Mexican lilac, campanula andmorning glory. The cooperative also markets propolis, beeswax, pollen and royal jelly.Over 90% of the annual production is exported to Europe, Japan and the United States,while just 10% remains in Mexico and is distributed by companies specializing in organicproducts. Fair-trade certification has helped the cooperative reach international markets.Over the years it has won many national and international awards for exports,sustainability, technology transfer, best practices and honey quality.“The cooperative unites indigenous people, women, elderly, youth and adults. All thebeekeepers are small producers with limited resources,” said Beate Heims, who hasbeen working with Miel Mexicana Volcan Popocatépetl as a consultant for five years. Shebelieves that they have found a formula for a successful social enterprise that istransferable and replicable. Long-term viability is integrated with economical, ecologicaland social aspects, with an emphasis on sustainability, training and fair trade. “Achievinga synergy between these factors is resulting in international competitiveness andorganizational consolidation,” she said.The cooperative’s benefits extend beyond its members: free training is given to around80 beekeepers in different states every year. The cooperative also develops socialprojects to promote sustainable development, aiming to improve family and communitylivelihoods and protect the environment through the application of its core values ofsolidarity, responsibility and respect.One of the cooperative’s goals is to create jobs to help stem migration to the UnitedStates. Says Beate: “Many Mexican men are working illegally in the USA, they earn moremoney and send the money back to their families in Mexico. This breaks the veryimportant structure of the family and leaves whole towns without men.” The cooperativeis proud of the fact that since 2003 there has been zero migration of its beekeepers to theUnited States.

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Miel Mexicana Volcan Popocatépetl03 January 2012by Carla Ranicki

Miel Mexicana VolcanPopocatépetl

Agriculture0

42Website

Description of the co-operative:We are a cooperative formed by 42small farmers in the state of Morelos10 years ago. We produce certifiedorganic honey, 93% of which isexported directly to the EuropeanUnion, the United States, and Japan.

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Do you co-operate?Sampleonline stories

What’s Stories.coop

Stories.coop is the world’s first global, digital campaign to spread the benefits of cooperation through the tradition of story-telling.Stories connect people through the power of words and the power of pictures. Stories tell the facts and they connect to our emotions, so your story of cooperation can make a lasting impact.Stories.coop delivers the UN’s message “Cooperative enterprises build a better world” to the global public in International Year of Cooperatives 2012.

We want the stories of cooperation from every corner of the globe; from the smal-lest cooperative to the biggest; from the cooperators with personal stories to tell or the stories of business success; to tho-se with observations on the cooperative model.We want to demonstrate to the globe the benefits of the coope-rative way of doing business, through your story of cooperation. Your stories will paint a picture of the enormous diversity of the co-operative experience.

Please play your part in our campaign.

Share your experience.

How I canpromotestories.coopand collect stories

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1. Email/call your contacts at cooperatives• Invite them to submit their own story (or tell them we have writers who can help write their story)

• Invite them to put the Stories.coop widget on their website (easily customizable and downloaded from the stories.coop homepage)

• download the Stories.coop widget to your website (the link is on the homepage at www.stories.coop). This allows you to have the links to the latest stories of the day right on your site or to one particular story. It is customizable to fit your website and easy to use.

2. Re-tweet stories.coop twitter tweets from your account

3. Share stories.coop stories and facebook posts on your social networks (the stories are easily shared directly from the story page)

4. Add comments to Stories.coop stories (comments are shown below each story)

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Stanford Cooperative HousesCooperative living has been an integral part of Stanford University's residentialsystem for the last 41 years. It's been an integral part of my life for the last fouryears, and this is what coops mean to me.Cooperative living, to me, means sharing ownership and responsibility not justfor a building, its supplies, and its upkeep, but also for the health of thecommunity. This goes to the heart of an "intentional community." We relate to each other not just by accident, by default, or by

dint of living in physical proximity,but because we intend to make athriving community by putting in thework to make it happen, work that ispaid out tenfold in the joys of anauthentic and deep connection tothe friends we live with.Sustainability-minded, sociallyresponsible, and a little counter-cultural, we are here day in and dayout, proving that it is possible to livein a way that's good for theresidents AND good for the world. Whether you're in Chi Theta Chi,Columbae, The Enchanted BroccoliForest, Hammarskjöld, Kairos,Synergy, or Terra, you share in thecooperative model and in its joys.The feel of daily life includes theidea that compassion andcompromise starts at home. Itincludes the idea that activelistening and consensus decision-making hold the promise of changein a world tethered to ideologies,dogmatism, and partisanship. Weshare the most psychologicallycentral and intimate parts of ourlives with our housemates, decidingwhere people sleep, what food willbe bought and served, explorationsof the idea of personal space: all arepart of being open and honest withother people about your needs, andthe onus is on the group to findcreative solutions that meet theneeds of every member. We are allequally important voices in thecommunity, and collectively ourvoices sing the praises ofcooperative living that we and theworld would be tragically lackingwithout.

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Stanford Cooperative Houses27 December 2011by Steven Michael Crane

Stanford CooperativeHouses

Housing50

307Website

Description of the co-operative:The motto for Stanford's cooperativecommunity is More than the Sum of itsSmarts. It encompasses sevenhouses, Chi Theta Chi, Columbae,Enchanted Broccoli Forest,Hammarskjold, Kairos, Synergy andTerra. The members of the housingcooperative are students at Stanford,they also run the houses, sharinghousehold duties.

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Miel Mexicana VolcanPopocatépetlWhen the Miel Mexicana Volcan Popocatépetl cooperative was founded in 2001, itsmembers produced just 3 tonnes of honey. Now it exports over 500 tonnes of certifiedorganic and fair-trade honey to 10 different countries every year.Though the cooperative works in ten Mexican states, it is based in Morelos, in southernMexico, and most of its beekeepers work in the foothills of the snow-cappedPopocatépetl volcano, Mexico’s second-highest peak. Though traditionally a honey-producing area, the local honey was not always very high quality, and was oftencontaminated by toxic residues and antibiotics given to the bees.In contrast, the Miel Mexicana Volcán Popocatépetl cooperative has been certifiedorganic since 2004, and has always worked hard to make sure its 42 members produceonly the highest quality honey. Nine different types are produced from local plants—sunflower, chamomile, mesquite, orange, avocado, cactus, Mexican lilac, campanula andmorning glory. The cooperative also markets propolis, beeswax, pollen and royal jelly.Over 90% of the annual production is exported to Europe, Japan and the United States,while just 10% remains in Mexico and is distributed by companies specializing in organicproducts. Fair-trade certification has helped the cooperative reach international markets.Over the years it has won many national and international awards for exports,sustainability, technology transfer, best practices and honey quality.“The cooperative unites indigenous people, women, elderly, youth and adults. All thebeekeepers are small producers with limited resources,” said Beate Heims, who hasbeen working with Miel Mexicana Volcan Popocatépetl as a consultant for five years. Shebelieves that they have found a formula for a successful social enterprise that istransferable and replicable. Long-term viability is integrated with economical, ecologicaland social aspects, with an emphasis on sustainability, training and fair trade. “Achievinga synergy between these factors is resulting in international competitiveness andorganizational consolidation,” she said.The cooperative’s benefits extend beyond its members: free training is given to around80 beekeepers in different states every year. The cooperative also develops socialprojects to promote sustainable development, aiming to improve family and communitylivelihoods and protect the environment through the application of its core values ofsolidarity, responsibility and respect.One of the cooperative’s goals is to create jobs to help stem migration to the UnitedStates. Says Beate: “Many Mexican men are working illegally in the USA, they earn moremoney and send the money back to their families in Mexico. This breaks the veryimportant structure of the family and leaves whole towns without men.” The cooperativeis proud of the fact that since 2003 there has been zero migration of its beekeepers to theUnited States.

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Miel Mexicana Volcan Popocatépetl03 January 2012by Carla Ranicki

Miel Mexicana VolcanPopocatépetl

Agriculture0

42Website

Description of the co-operative:We are a cooperative formed by 42small farmers in the state of Morelos10 years ago. We produce certifiedorganic honey, 93% of which isexported directly to the EuropeanUnion, the United States, and Japan.

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HansalimIn the Korean language, “han” refers to all living things on earth, while “salim” means torevive and give life. So the compound “Hansalim” means “save all living things”.

An ambitious name, but then Hansalim, Korea’s biggest consumers’ cooperative, is anambitious project. Founded in 1986 as a single grocery store, it now has 284,000consumer members, 2,000 producer members, 328 employees, 131 stores and aturnover in the millions of dollars ($160 million in 2009).

Hansalim is a cooperative association that produces environmentally friendly, organicproducts and organizes direct trade between farmers and consumers. Hansalim deals notonly with food (like rice, grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, meat, seafood, dairy, jams,sauces, tofu, noodles, dumplings and snacks) but also books, cosmetics, eco-friendlydetergents and toilet rolls. Food production follows agreed standards, for example usingno pesticides or chemical fertilizers and avoiding artificial additives. Consumer membersmonitor all processes and help inspect production centres.

But Hansalim is much more than a distributor of fair-trade, organic products, as Gyu HoJeong, a researcher at Hansalim’s Moshim and Salim Institute explains: “Hansalim hasbeen working under the slogan, ‘producer takes responsibility in consumer's life andconsumer takes responsibility in producer's livelihood.' So the unique quality of Hansalimis that we are not just working for the consumer's rights and interests but also trying tobuild up a society where the urban area and the rural area, human and nature cancoexist and develop together.”

Producer communities in rural areas and consumer members in urban areas cooperatetogether, trading directly through Hansalim’s own distribution system. Product prices aredetermined by consultation between producers and consumers, independent from themarket's price system. Hansalim producers own their own farms or processing facilities,and all products are delivered from production sites to consumers directly through thedistribution centre, without any commission-based sales. Payments to producers accountfor 76% of the price structure, while the remaining 24% is used for transportation, labourand social activities “aimed at creating a better world.”

Hansalim headquarters in Seoul establishes the policy and strategy for the movementand coordinates business activities, while 20 local Hansalim cooperatives around Koreacarry Hansalim products and coordinate environmental campaigns from the grassrootslevel. Community regeneration is currently a top priority. Says Gyu Ho Jeong: “We areworking in various fields of activity, not just food, but also environment, welfare,education, autonomy and so on, to make our community more sustainable based on theempowerment of the organized members.”

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Wow~ It's so amazing to meet Hansalim in this page. I like Hansalim, one of the Korea's Coop. Hansalim is the leading coop in Korea.Since 1986, Hansalim pursed the harmony between the right of Famers and the consumer'r right to save The Life.

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Hansalim06 January 2012by Carla Ranicki

HansalimConsumer

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Description of the co-operative:Consumers’ cooperative producingenvironmentally friendly, organicproducts and organizing direct tradebetween farmers and consumers.

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A billion cooperative voices

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Miel Mexicana VolcanPopocatépetlWhen the Miel Mexicana Volcan Popocatépetl cooperative was founded in 2001, itsmembers produced just 3 tonnes of honey. Now it exports over 500 tonnes of certifiedorganic and fair-trade honey to 10 different countries every year.Though the cooperative works in ten Mexican states, it is based in Morelos, in southernMexico, and most of its beekeepers work in the foothills of the snow-cappedPopocatépetl volcano, Mexico’s second-highest peak. Though traditionally a honey-producing area, the local honey was not always very high quality, and was oftencontaminated by toxic residues and antibiotics given to the bees.In contrast, the Miel Mexicana Volcán Popocatépetl cooperative has been certifiedorganic since 2004, and has always worked hard to make sure its 42 members produceonly the highest quality honey. Nine different types are produced from local plants—sunflower, chamomile, mesquite, orange, avocado, cactus, Mexican lilac, campanula andmorning glory. The cooperative also markets propolis, beeswax, pollen and royal jelly.Over 90% of the annual production is exported to Europe, Japan and the United States,while just 10% remains in Mexico and is distributed by companies specializing in organicproducts. Fair-trade certification has helped the cooperative reach international markets.Over the years it has won many national and international awards for exports,sustainability, technology transfer, best practices and honey quality.“The cooperative unites indigenous people, women, elderly, youth and adults. All thebeekeepers are small producers with limited resources,” said Beate Heims, who hasbeen working with Miel Mexicana Volcan Popocatépetl as a consultant for five years. Shebelieves that they have found a formula for a successful social enterprise that istransferable and replicable. Long-term viability is integrated with economical, ecologicaland social aspects, with an emphasis on sustainability, training and fair trade. “Achievinga synergy between these factors is resulting in international competitiveness andorganizational consolidation,” she said.The cooperative’s benefits extend beyond its members: free training is given to around80 beekeepers in different states every year. The cooperative also develops socialprojects to promote sustainable development, aiming to improve family and communitylivelihoods and protect the environment through the application of its core values ofsolidarity, responsibility and respect.One of the cooperative’s goals is to create jobs to help stem migration to the UnitedStates. Says Beate: “Many Mexican men are working illegally in the USA, they earn moremoney and send the money back to their families in Mexico. This breaks the veryimportant structure of the family and leaves whole towns without men.” The cooperativeis proud of the fact that since 2003 there has been zero migration of its beekeepers to theUnited States.

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Co-op name:

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Miel Mexicana Volcan Popocatépetl03 January 2012by Carla Ranicki

Miel Mexicana VolcanPopocatépetl

Agriculture0

42Website

Description of the co-operative:We are a cooperative formed by 42small farmers in the state of Morelos10 years ago. We produce certifiedorganic honey, 93% of which isexported directly to the EuropeanUnion, the United States, and Japan.

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Do you co-operate?Sampleonline stories

TIPS ON HOW TO WRITE YOUR STORY• Take some time to consider how you want to tell your story. Is it going to be told through the eyes of someone in your organisation? Think about who has been in your organisation for a long time who might have some interesting stories to tell. How about a new member’s view of what you do?

• A good way to think about stories is that personal stories are more engaging than stories which list a bunch of facts. (Not that we’ve got anything against your facts, in fact, there’s a box on the right hand column of every story on stories.coop which is set aside for precisely that information, but they can weigh down a story).

• The more concisely you can tell your story the more likely you are to grab and keep the interest of your reader. Stories.coop can take stories as long as 550 words approximately, but you might find you can get across the same information in as little as 200, or even 100, words.

• Take a look at some of these stories to get a feel for how to tell a story well: (Argan Tree, Keta Sandlanders, People’s Food Co-op)

• Use the highest quality pictures to illustrate your story that you can find. Pictures of people shaking hands, or accepting a cheque, or standing in front of a sign or logo won’t tell a story as well as pictures of people doing their jobs, or high quality, professionally-taken close-ups of individuals.

TIPS ON HOW TO VIDEO YOUR STORY• Video stories are accepted via a link to YouTube, so your video must first be uploaded there, either on your own page or on the stories.coop YouTube page. Please contact info@stories.coop if you need assistance with this.

• Making a video can be as simple as putting together a series of still images – it doesn’t need to be moving

footage to make a Youtube video (see TIPS ON HOW TO MAKE AN AUDIO SLIDESHOW below).

• Youtube has many tips on how to produce videos with moving footage at http://www.youtube.com/t/yt_handbook_produce

TIPS ON HOW TO MAKE AN AUDIO SLIDESHOW• Record your story on your computer, or smartphone, or video camera. It can be as simple as recording your story in your own words on your computer. Or you can find someone in your organisation, a co-worker or a member, who would like to speak about the organisation. Play around with your positioning in relation to the microphone to make sure you’re recording the best quality sound. You can also use music – as long as you have permission from the artist/s – and other sounds which might help tell the story.

• Gather together the photos you want to use. You might be surprised about how many pictures you will need. Expect that it will take at least 30 really good photos to make an audio slideshow work well.

• Divide your photos into sequences. The best audio slideshows are between two to three minutes long – in our opinion. Imagine that for a slideshow of this length you will need as much as 40 photographs divided into between five and six sequences. The photos should be a mixture of close ups and wide-angled shots.

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