Friday night, 21st Feb., I popped along to an event organised by the Tipperary Environmental Network<\/strong> in LiT Thurles. \u00a0The event ‘Co-ops \u2013 The saving of a community’ involved presentations by three speakers followed by a discussion and Q and A\u00a0\u00a0session. \u00a0The speakers were Bill Kelly of Meitheal Mid West and the Limerick Community \u00a0Grocery Co-operative, Marcella Maher Keogh of the Drombane Upperchurch Energy Team and Mary Fogarty from The Cottage Loughmore.<\/p>\n

Bill Kelly<\/strong> was first up to speak about Meitheal Mid West<\/a>\u00a0and the Limerick Community Grocery Co-operative<\/a>. Meitheal Mid West<\/strong> was established in 2012 when an initial group of 19 got together. It was Ireland’s first Multi-Stakeholder Co-operative, which means it is a business that is owned and democratically controlled by multiple stakeholders which can include workers, consumers, producers, and\/or community members. The community grocery started out as a buying club but is expanding it’s services as it grows.<\/p>\n

In order to learn more about successful co-ops they visited the hugely\u00a0successful Mondrag\u00f3n Cooperative Corporation<\/a> in the Spanish Basque country which employs over 80,000 people and has an annual turnover of \u20ac14 Billion. The co-op model is the default model for any new businesses setting up in the region, even schools are established as co-ops.<\/p>\n

The group also visited the Park Slope Food Co-op<\/a> in New York which is open 7 days a week, has over 16,500 members and has an annual turnover of $48 million. Members volunteer for 4 hours work per month. They could be shopping today and packing shelves tomorrow. They employ 70 full time staff who earn $56000 per annum (7 staff are on higher salaries of $70k due to extra work and responsibilities). There is a waiting list to become a member of Park Slope Co-op. You can read more about it in this BBC report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Limerick based co-op now has 108 members (as of 21\/02\/14<\/em>) with an average of 5 new members joining up each week. Their mantra is ‘wholesome food at affordable prices’. Bill is keen to emphasise the importance of looking after your suppliers in a co-op. \u00a0He also spoke a bit about safeguarding the assets of a co-op from predatory exploitative elements and to ensure a legal structure is in place to prevent takeovers and buyouts. This would mean having a strict form of co-op that would protect the ethos of it’s members.<\/p>\n

Bill told us that in the future they will be exploring crowdfunding to assist in their plans for expansion. This will possibly be in the form of loans from members of the community who would rather see their money put to use and benefiting the local community than just simply sitting in a bank account earning a low rate of interest. Peer to peer financing has seen considerable growth over the past while. Irish company LinkedFinance.com<\/a>\u00a0has assisted several viable businesses obtain loans from members of the public who offer the amount they are willing to lend and what interest rate they would like.<\/p>\n

In true co-operative spirit Bill told us he was travelling to Dublin the following day to visit Dublin Food Co-op<\/a>\u00a0to share ideas and learn from each other. As is evident in the UK where co-ops are far more plentiful, there is a willingness to share information and knowledge. A pleasant change from the corporate diet of ‘dog eat dog’ we have all been fed.<\/p>\n

This video helps explain more about workers co-operatives.
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