With the support of NASCO board member Jennifer Scott, we made a significant dent this month in our long-term project to digitize our historical archives. While we still have boxes of documents left to scan, we’d like to share some of our progress. We’ve uncovered a lot of old NASCO publications, many of them published and laid out by hand, files on our members dating back several decades, conference materials, and other resources. We’ve included several of these finds in our Shared Resource Library for your curiosity and enjoyment.
The Inter-Cooperative Council (ICC) at the University of Michigan is hiring two full-time positions! Please see the hiring announcements linked below for more information.
- Director of Member Services - CLOSED
- Director of Financial Services - CLOSED
These positions are filled as of Spring 2015.
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The Berkeley Student Cooperative (BSC) in Berkeley, California is hiring! Please follow the links below for more information:
We are very pleased to welcome Rek Kwawer to the NASCO staff. Rek will be serving as NASCO's Director of Operations, and will be working full time beginning the first week of July. Rek brings experience in large and small coops, student and non-student coops, and coop development. Rek previously served as the Member Services Coordinator for the Madison Community Cooperative.
http://www.nasco.coop/about/staff/profiles
This month, NASCO staff provided on-site training support in Davis, CA to over 70 WestCo participants; began hiring a new Director of Operations; held their annual staff retreat in order to plan for the upcoming year’s events, programs, and member services; attended the annual Cooperative Hall of Fame to honor our heroes and dedicated leaders; continued preparing for the 2014 Staff and Managers Conference; continued preparing for NASCO Institute 2014; published a Request for Proposals to create a new housing co-op; and continued to assist the Lamont Street Collective in Washington D.C. in their development project.
The NASCO Board is participating in an Anti-Oppression Audit of our organization, facilitated by members of the AORTA Collective, and is continuing to prepare for its June board meeting in Chicago, which will be concurrent with the other two NASCO Family Boards’ meetings.
This year’s Cooperative Education and Training Institute will be held November 7-9, 2014 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We’ll be sending out a request for workshop proposals in the coming weeks. For now, get excited by reading the conference theme statement below and watch our website for updates.
Co-ops for life: Owning our Future
How do you imagine yourself ten years from now? You could be living in a cooperative housing community, shopping at a cooperative grocery, banking with a credit union, volunteering as a board member of your local cooperative school, and working as co-owner of a cooperative business. You could be an integral part of a multifaceted, international push to return ownership to the hands of the people. The skills you’re building now can be the building blocks for a lifetime of cooperation.
What will your current cooperative look like in ten years? It could be growing and thriving, serving more members every year. Other co-ops could look to your co-op for best practices in education, governance, financial stewardship, employee management, and leadership development. What you do today to ensure the stability, democracy, and overall health of your co-op’s future will determine your co-op’s place in our movement’s history.
The Sixth Cooperative Principle states: "Cooperatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the cooperative movement by working together through local, regional, national, and international structures."
The USA Cooperative Youth Council, with support from the Ralph K. Morris Foundation Cooperative Leadership Fund, is providing scholarships for cooperative youth to attend the 2014 Association of Cooperative Educators (ACE) Institute in Texas next month. Please see their announcement below and apply promptly.
Greetings USACYC Community & Supporters,
We are pleased to announce we are fully sponsoring a Cohort of 20 cooperative youth (under 30 years) to attend the Association of Cooperative Educators' Annual Institute in Austin, Texas this July! Please let others in your networks know. :)
If selected to the cohort, folks will get the opportunity to connect with the rest of the group before, during, & after the Institute to learn from each other, as well as do some planning & brainstorming around youth involvement, cooperative education, & the role of coops in building the new economy. We encourage people with all levels of cooperative knowledge, from all sectors, & across all the regions of the country to apply. People of Color, Women, Trans* folks, & Working Class peoples are encouraged to apply. Applications will remain open until the Cohort is filled, though we recommend you apply during the month of May.