CooperAcción Curriculum

Together with UCI Sustainability Resource Center, UCI Community Resilience Projects collaborates with members of Cooperacion Santa Ana and the CRECE Urban Farming Cooperative on a community-driven curriculum project. The project aims to prepare residents of Santa Ana, along with UCI students, faculty, and staff, to engage in on-going community-driven efforts to build healthy communities based on community ownership, cooperation, and land stewardship for food sovereignty. The project takes place in Santa Ana and is being piloted in two parts:

Part 1:        Cooperation in Action, A Curriculum for Worker Cooperatives

                      Participants:             Santa Ana residents registered through Cooperacion Santa Ana

                      Pilot Sessions:         Weekly, August 22 – November 15, 2019

                      Second Cohort:        Weekly, January – May, 2021

More information about Part 1: Community organizers Ana Siria Urzua and Abel Ruiz lead CooperAcción: Curso de Cooperatives de trabajadores in Santa Ana weekly through a collaboration among Cooperacion Santa Ana, UCI Sustainability Resource Center, and UCI Community Resilience Projects. The class boasts over thirty participants and seventeen cooperatives among them. Cooperacion Santa Ana describes the class as a “cooperative business development program that offers training, coaching, and incubation to low-income residents and families of Santa Ana interested in growing additional income streams and developing their businesses.” The twelve sessions come with an opportunity to learn how to create worker cooperatives, frameworks for shifting from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy, as well as practices for personal and community wellbeing. The course also carries potential to shift the local economy in a more equitable direction via practices of democratic governance and reciprocity. The second cohort meets weekly January – May, 2021.

Part 2:        From Community Engagement to Ownership, A Curriculum for Partners and Allies

                      Participants:          UCI students, faculty & staff registered through UCI CR

                      Sessions:              TBD, Winter 2022

Students working on the project

Opportunities

UCI Faculty and Staff: Part 1 of this project seeks additional faculty and staff involvement in the areas of business, finance, and marketing. Part 2 of this project seeks additional faculty and staff involvement in the area of equity-oriented, reciprocity-based, participatory action research and teaching. Contact us with interest.

Read More

Read graduate student blog post about Cooperation in Action, A Curriculum for Worker Cooperatives