On Monday, October 13 at 6:30pm in the Belfast Free Library, the Belfast Co-op is sponsoring a free presentation with Jonah Fertig, coordinator for Cooperative Fermentation, and Rob Brown, Director of the Cooperative Development Institute's (CDI) Business Ownership Solutions program.  The Library is located at 106 High Street in downtown Belfast.  All are welcome.

Worker cooperatives are growing in Maine and around the country as communities explore the development of rooted businesses that contribute to community wealth.  Recently on Deer Isle, three businesses, including a grocery store, variety, and pharmacy, converted to worker-ownership preserving over 60 jobs and creating ownership for employees.  In this presentation, Jonah and Rob will explore: the ways in which worker cooperatives can provide secession plans for existing business; steps to create new worker cooperatives; worker cooperatives in Norway, Spain and New York City; and how more worker cooperatives can form in the Midcoast. 

Presenters:

Jonah Fertig is the coordinator for Cooperative Fermentation which works in collaboration with the Resilience Hub and the Cooperative Development Institute.  His work is focused on helping people create worker and producer cooperatives in the Maine food system.  He has co-founded several organizations and businesses including Local Sprouts Cooperative, a worker cooperative in Portland, Machigonne Community Land Trust, and the Meg Perry Center, and lives on a cooperative organic farm in Arundel.

Rob Brown lives in Northport and is the Director of CDI’s Business Ownership Solutions program (BOS), working with small businesses in Maine to convert them to worker  cooperatives.  He has also worked to convert mobile home parks to Resident Owned Cooperatives.  Most recently, he was part of a group of advisors, including the Independent Retailers Shared Services Cooperative, which converted a group of retail businesses on Deer Isle to the Island Employee Cooperative; the largest worker co-op in Maine and the second largest in New England.  Rob has just returned from Oslo, Norway, where he was part of a delegation of US nonprofit and labor leaders who learned about cooperative development initiatives in that country.  Rob will discuss these and other advancements in worker ownership.