Join the Interagency Working Group on Cooperative Development for a meeting on co-op ecosystems

Joana Ibarretxe Cano, a production manager at Mondragon, speaks with other workers. [photo: Ana Maria Arevalo Gosen/New York Times]The Mondragon cooperative system, the seventh largest corporation in Spain, lifted the Basque region out of poverty in the years following the Spanish Civil War and now boasts $12 billion in annual revenue. In Italy's Emilia-Romagna region, cooperatives are responsible for about a third of the gross domestic product.

Join the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s Interagency Working Group on Cooperative Development on January 15 at 1 p.m. ESTfor a meeting on what U.S. cooperatives can learn from these highly successful ecosystems. Are there U.S. communities already applying the lessons from Mondragon and Emilia Romagna?

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The meeting will feature a panel of distinguished speakers including:

• Frederick Freundlich, professor at Mondragon University
• Francesca Federzoni, CEO of Politecnica Cooperative in Emilia-Romagna, Italy
• Matthew Hancock, author of Compete to Cooperate on the Emilia-Romagna cooperative ecosystem
• Christina Clamp, Cooperative Hall of Fame member whose Mondragon scholarship informs the operation of worker cooperatives in the U.S.
• Eric Britton, attorney and author of "Selling to Your Employees Through a Worker Cooperative"
• Deborah Groban Olson, an attorney whose life's work has been to bring Mondragon principles to the U.S.

Simultaneous interpretation in Spanish will be available.

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