Here is something I absolutely didn't know that I didn't know! A little background, first. My dearest and oldest friend, Sheila and I met up for weekend in Santa Barbara last summer for a "catch up". We've been friends for over 45 years, our children played together from preschool days. Sheila has always been quite a social activist, keeping me informed and educated on many issues, political and social.
This weekend was no different as she told me about a project she'd been working on in the San Francisco Bay Area. It seems there are many people in many fields interested in an alternative economy to capitalism. Not to replace it but to give choices and get in line with the ecology we need to attend to, globally. There are apparently some successful models for alternative economies in other countries and well as the United States. Sheila was aware of region in Spain that had built a successful economy around worker owned businesses.
We were discussing Italy and Sheila asked me if there might be a region in Italy with such a model. I didn't have an answer for her! It wasn't a topic I'd associated with my Italian addiction. So, we did what people do when we want information these days, we "googled" the subject and came across an amazing model in Italy that was over 150 years old. A wonderful aspect of the search was finding out that the cities involved were thriving. What a surprise and when we dug deeper into the subject we were rewarded with lots of information coming out of the University of Bologna.
There was also a great documentary that we discovered on Vimeo and thus my next adventure began: Go to Bologna, unearth some educators who might be willing to arrange workshops for Americans to learn more about the worker owned model set up and thriving in the Bologna/Modena region of Italy. The research we need to do to take a group for study purposes will take some time but after seeing the documentary it was just too juicy to ignore the opportunity to learn about this model. I mean, can you imagine all sectors in a community interacting with each other to support each and every worker, equally? And if the economy suffered no one lost their job, just maybe worked a bit less, kept their healthcare and childcare. To top it off they did it in a "green" way, with nearly zero waste!
Italians aren't always very forward about promoting their successes, so maybe the fact that I didn't know about this hidden treasure of hope for a cooperative style of community shouldn't surprise me. But really, I had no idea I would stumble upon something in Italy so new and exciting to me.
This weekend was no different as she told me about a project she'd been working on in the San Francisco Bay Area. It seems there are many people in many fields interested in an alternative economy to capitalism. Not to replace it but to give choices and get in line with the ecology we need to attend to, globally. There are apparently some successful models for alternative economies in other countries and well as the United States. Sheila was aware of region in Spain that had built a successful economy around worker owned businesses.
We were discussing Italy and Sheila asked me if there might be a region in Italy with such a model. I didn't have an answer for her! It wasn't a topic I'd associated with my Italian addiction. So, we did what people do when we want information these days, we "googled" the subject and came across an amazing model in Italy that was over 150 years old. A wonderful aspect of the search was finding out that the cities involved were thriving. What a surprise and when we dug deeper into the subject we were rewarded with lots of information coming out of the University of Bologna.
There was also a great documentary that we discovered on Vimeo and thus my next adventure began: Go to Bologna, unearth some educators who might be willing to arrange workshops for Americans to learn more about the worker owned model set up and thriving in the Bologna/Modena region of Italy. The research we need to do to take a group for study purposes will take some time but after seeing the documentary it was just too juicy to ignore the opportunity to learn about this model. I mean, can you imagine all sectors in a community interacting with each other to support each and every worker, equally? And if the economy suffered no one lost their job, just maybe worked a bit less, kept their healthcare and childcare. To top it off they did it in a "green" way, with nearly zero waste!
Italians aren't always very forward about promoting their successes, so maybe the fact that I didn't know about this hidden treasure of hope for a cooperative style of community shouldn't surprise me. But really, I had no idea I would stumble upon something in Italy so new and exciting to me.
