COOP Stories

www.energiabonita.coop

Energía Bonita is the Energy Community of La Palma (Canary Islands). We want to produce and consume local renewable energy, managed and controlled by the people of our island.

OUR VISION
The energy transition, in the hands of the people of La Palma!
We are a non-profit cooperative, comprising individual small and medium-sized enterprises and local administrations. They promote projects to produce and share renewable energy among people, companies, and partner entities to build a new energy model based on saving and efficiency. Along with the fight against energy poverty, they aim to integrate all people regardless of their socioeconomic situation.

It is an institution founded on the principles, norms, and spirit of universal cooperative. It receives as members all professionals in the health sector: nurses, doctors, dentists, psychologists, bioanalysts, among others. It is not for profit, unlike what the partners themselves receive, who are the sole owners, occupy all management positions, and benefit from the services and results of their financial operations.

About Cooperatives and .coop
The global Cooperative community has more than 1 billion members, representing 12% of the world’s employed population. All Cooperatives verify their identity when selecting a .coop web address. Your unique business identity is recognized online with a .coop domain name – your digital brand – a brand known for its economic advantages to its community, consumers, and members.

If you would like your cooperative featured, click on this link to submit your coop profile!

Visit Energía Bonita on social media:

www.cooproenf.coop

We are a cooperative in the healthcare sector, comprising nurses, Doctors, Bioanalysts, Psychologists, Dentists, and Nursing Assistants, among others.

These health professionals and technicians enjoy the same rights and duties. We offer services with the best interest rates and flexible payment terms tailored to the needs of our associates.

We emerged with the intention of meeting the economic and social needs of our associates, their families, and the broader community.

The objective of satisfying the economic and social needs of the associates, their families and community.

We have a national coverage made up of 15 cooperative districts with technical and decision-making capacity to offer members timely, humanized, quality and warm services.

In our Cooperative, its limit is its debt capacity, always in accordance with Law 127-64 and the statutes and internal regulations that govern us.

We contribute to the creation of wealth and the construction of an inclusive and equitable society to solve the problems or needs of our members, promoting the integral development of the country.

HISTORY
The Cooperative of Multiple Services of Nursing Professionals – COOPROENF – was founded on October 19, 1995, and incorporated by Executive Decree No. 94-98, based on the principles of solidarity and mutual aid to improve the quality of life for Dominican nurses; it is a democratically run, joint ownership company.

It is an institution founded on the principles, norms, and spirit of universal cooperative. It receives as members all professionals in the health sector: nurses, doctors, dentists, psychologists, bioanalysts, among others. It is not for profit, unlike what the partners themselves receive, who are the sole owners, occupy all management positions, and benefit from the services and results of their financial operations.

About Cooperatives and .coop
The global Cooperative community has more than 1 billion members, representing 12% of the world’s employed population. All Cooperatives verify their identity when selecting a .coop web address. Your unique business identity is recognized online with a .coop domain name – your digital brand – a brand known for its economic advantages to its community, consumers, and members.

If you would like your cooperative featured, click on this link to submit your story.

Visit COOPROENF on social media:

www.mountainhealth.coop

Background:

Everyone deserves the financial security that comes with affordable health insurance. We created the Co-Op to create access to quality, affordable healthcare, which is why our members govern the company.

We believe in investing profits into our members through added benefits and services like dental and vision reimbursements, telehealth, travel benefits, and low-cost prescriptions.

Come as you are, whoever you are. We’re Mountain Health CO-OP. We belong to you, and you belong here.

Services:
We offer non-profit member-governed health insurance that promotes member engagement and provides access to high-quality medical care. Our vision is to champion a more innovative, member-centric healthcare delivery system by promoting the triple aim where providers are engaged to improve population health, enhance individual healthcare, and control healthcare spending.

About Cooperatives and .coop
The global Cooperative community has more than 1 billion members, representing 12% of the world’s employed population. All Cooperatives verify their identity when selecting a .coop web address. Your unique business identity is recognized online with a .coop domain name – your digital brand – a brand known for its economic advantages to its community, consumers, and members.

If you would like your cooperative featured, click on this link to submit your story.

Visit Mountain Health Coop on social media:

www.avanza.coop

History:
During the month of June 1980, 27 officials of the Quindío Sectional Health Service drew up an Act of Incorporation of the Multioctave Employees’ Savings and Credit Cooperative, COMSALUD LTDA, obtaining its legal status number 0034 from the now defunct DANCOOP, on January 14, 1981.

Under this corporate name, the services of the Cooperative were extended to the employees of the public hospitals of the Department and later, in 1995, to the servants of the Municipality of Armenia, being the first Entity outside the Health Sector to sign an agreement for the signing of libraries with COMSALUD.

The creation of the public I.P.S. as a result of Law 100 of 1993 confused the COMSALUD Cooperative with one of these companies. Its corporate name became the main limitation to extending services to other sectors. These reasons led to the modification of the Articles of Association on March 26, 1997, the date on which the General Assembly of Delegates approved the corporate name of Cooperative Financier del Quindío, COOFIQUINDÍO and subsequently, on October 1, 1999, a new change of name to Cooperative de Choro y Creditor del Quindío COOFIQUINDÍO.

Given the financial capacity and the need to extend its essential services at the national level, a brand study is carried out with specialized firms, which recommend the change of name for a more general one and not related to a specific region, in order not to generate resistance in the different departments in which agencies would be installed.

The argument presented in the preceding paragraph motivated the change of company name from COOFIQUINDÍO to AVANZA – National Savings and Credit Cooperative.

It is important to state that despite the name change, its same corporate purpose and legal personality are preserved, a situation that has been widely known by the Associates, who have gladly accepted the change in BRAND and its Corporate image. AVANZA currently has more than 15,500 Associates and more than 50,000 Beneficiaries to whom it provides excellent Savings, Credit and Social Welfare services, through its 6 Agencies in the department of Quindío, Norte del Valle, Risaralda, Caquetá and Huila.

Services:
To offer the best savings and credit services to its members and welfare programs for them and their families, generating socially responsible actions that benefit the community where the cooperative carries out its activities.

Vision:
AVANZA, upon completing its 50th anniversary of legal existence, will be located in first place in the Coffee Region by the size of Assets, Portfolio of Loans and Deposits, based on an attractive portfolio of services, technological innovation and commercial efficiency.

About Cooperatives and .coop
The global Cooperative community has more than 1 billion members, representing 12% of the world’s employed population. All Cooperatives verify their identity when selecting a .coop web address. Your unique business identity is recognized online with a .coop domain name – your digital brand – a brand known for its economic advantages to its community, consumers, and members.

If you would like your cooperative featured, click on this link to submit your story.

Visit Avanza on social media:

www.yetu.coop

We are building the Yetu Infotech Collective as a stable and sustainable institution with the resources and capacity to support the growth of the socio-economic justice sector for many years to come.

Our collective includes Busi Mtabane, Esethu Stofile, Janine Arends, Jaysen Naidoo, Kholiswa Tyiki, Lebogang Mokoena, Lungile Sigasa, Mark Weinberg, Michael Graaf, Nicolas Dieltiens, Nosana Sondiyazi, Sinenhlanhla Manqele,Thabang Bhili, and Thilda Jack.

We envision a people’s internet that is user-owned and controlled, recommodified, free/affordable, safe and secure – a communications network that enables a world where all the resources required for life are produced democratically in harmony with the biosphere by each according to their ability and shared according to their needs – a world where everyone enjoys equality and dignity, and are free to contribute their creativity and live in peace.

Our context:

Information technology (Infotech) is increasingly shaping our lives and the Covid pandemic has accelerated the need for online interaction.

This process has the potential to enable greater access to information, openness and transparency, greater freedom of expression, solidarity, as well as stronger and more democratic forms of organising. But the digital age is reproducing the inequality and injustice of the society it is emerging in. We see not only an increasing divide between the power of those who have decent internet access and the majority, but also new forms of domination.

Rising authoritarianism (including surveillance, censorship and propaganda) is transforming our public spaces into open air prisons where we are constantly watched and trained to police ourselves – as well as surveillance capitalism that is transforming our privacy into something to be bought and sold. The right to communicate is emerging as a critical freedom to defend and advance in response to a digital feudalism where governments and a handful of large corporations control networks, platforms, technology and can shape content.

Our Goal & Purpose:
We envision a people’s internet that is user owned and controlled, decommodified, a free/affordable, safe and secure – a communications network that enables a world where all the resources required for life are produced democratically in harmony with the biosphere by each according to their ability and shared according to their needs – a world where everyone enjoys equality and dignity, and are free to contribute their creativity and live in peace.

We aim to:

Support working class community initiatives to establish and maintain secure and affordable networks that build the Internet From Below.

Provide progressive civil society organisations – and social movements in particular – with affordable and secure communication technology and capacity development so that they can maximise the benefits of information technologies while mitigating the risks.

Advocate for a communication system that is decommodified and free from commercial and state surveillance and censorship.

Our Values:
We are united by a common commitment to gender liberation, anti-racism, solidarity, participatory democracy, and environmental and economic justice.

About Cooperatives and .coop
The global Cooperative community has more than 1 billion members, representing 12% of the world’s employed population. All Cooperatives verify their identity when selecting a .coop web address. Your unique business identity is recognized online with a .coop domain name – your digital brand – a brand known for its economic advantages to its community, consumers, and members.

If you would like your cooperative featured, click on this link to submit your story.

Visit Yetu Infotech Collective on social media:

www.commonscloud.coop

History:
CommonsCloud.coop is formed by people and entities that combine digital cloud tools in a technological and cooperative project with free software, as well as those that take charge of the service, implementation, maintenance, management, and support. It is promoted by the integral cooperative femProcomuns SCCL in intercooperation with other cooperatives and entities.

Services:
With CommonsCloud , we want to transform how we produce and consume technological tools. We will do this by raising awareness of the importance of using more ethical and democratic digital tools that allow collective self-management.

That is why we promote a cooperative digital cloud with different services and digital tools of free software, decentralised, careful with privacy and equipped with a data ethics policy. We understand that only through open and common cooperative can we contribute to greater technological autonomy of and for people.

We want to strengthen and consolidate the free software community, making its work visible, contributing to autonomy and technological interdependence from solidarity and transparency, but also to make possible a fairer world, which guarantees people’s right to a more ethical and accessible technology, at the service of their needs and not the interests of corporations. With CommonsCloud we will regain control over our data and some of our collective freedom!

About Cooperatives and .coop
The global Cooperative community has more than 1 billion members, representing 12% of the world’s employed population. All Cooperatives verify their identity when selecting a .coop web address. Your unique business identity is recognized online with a .coop domain name – your digital brand – a brand known for its economic advantages to its community, consumers, and members.

If you would like your cooperative featured, click on this link to submit your story.

Visit CommonsCloud on social media: