Reaching Future Cooperators

www.coopsrock.coop

added 02/23/09

Co-ops Rock! is a website developed just for teenagers. To be realistic about all the things competing for a young person’s attention, Co-ops Rock! is only a few pages long, is heavy on edgy, progressive visuals, and gives a quick, general overview of the cooperative movement.

by Ken Davis

In the middle of the 19th century in Rochdale, England, a group of weavers found a socioeconomic solution to the prevalent “me-first” economic philosophy of their day (and ours!) and called it—sensibly and accurately—cooperation. Over the next 150 years and beyond, it would give rise to a variety of cooperative endeavors on both sides of the Atlantic and provide a framework for effective social change and principle-led business practice that strives to put the needs of the many over the gains of a few.

Now, one might think that such a tale would be of little interest to today’s youth. But, to my surprise, it was a story and a concept that resonated deeply with the group of teenagers who were touring the Co-op a year ago as part of our participation in Job Shadow Day, an event coordinated by the Upper Valley Business and Education Partnership. In hindsight it’s no surprise. Theirs is a generation of war, of economic uncertainty, of predatory globalization and its growing number of malcontents. These young men and women had an inherent sense that the world could quickly run amok without action and intervention from people paying attention. And they also knew that young people, like themselves, were chock full of the stuff it takes to make a difference.

Many left that day claiming the commitment to becoming future cooperators. As a result, I wondered how many other teens would express the same interest if only the cooperative movement could find a way to reach out to them in a verbal and visual language with which they might identify.

Co-ops Rock! was born.

Reaching Out

Co-ops Rock! is a website developed just for teenagers. To be realistic about all the things competing for a young person’s attention, Co-ops Rock! is only a few pages long, is heavy on edgy, progressive visuals, and gives a quick, general overview of the cooperative movement.

The site is also a hallmark of cooperation itself. It started simply and crudely as a personal project—created by a cooperator well past his teenage years with a cat in his lap and a woefully outdated, 10-year-old PC in the corner of his bedroom, a guy who thought that a funky looking website loaded with somewhat avant-garde art might appeal to young people and convey important concepts about the cooperative movement. Many long nights later, the site was—in cyberspeak—all dressed up with no place to go. Then the magic happened:

  • The Co-op Food Stores quickly gave the idea its full support and brought the project in as part of its family of websites, subsequently promoting it to the world at large.
  • National Cooperative Grocers Association happily shared not only the Co-ops Rock! name (unbeknown to the site designer, they had coined it earlier for their own outreach program to young people), but also donated a “dot coop” domain that would make the site much easier for web surfers to find.

There was nothing in it for any of these cooperators other than the intrinsic reward that comes from doing good, which of course is what cooperation is all about. And the effort has paid off. Today co-ops across the country have added the site to their links and promoted it on their web pages and blogs. In the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire, area teachers have taken notice and are brainstorming ways to use the site to teach units on the cooperative movement in their classes. And teens themselves who have seen it have given it the ultimate seal of approval—forwarding it to their friends and calling it “rad.”

Where the project may go from here is anyone’s guess, but there’s an easy way to find out. Stay tuned to the site itself and tell a teen you know to do the same. If you have ideas and suggestions, we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us through the Co-ops Rock! website or email us. And finally, if you have your own ideas for ways to reach out to young people about cooperation, by all means don’t wait. The world needs all the young cooperators it can get.

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