Sustainable economic development has to involve jobs for people. In response to the need for work the CDCA has helped establish six worker-owned cooperatives and currently works with four:
Mamas and daddies want to provide for their own families, rather than depending on crisis aid. They want to send their kids to school. They want to provide them with health care homes, clothing, shoes, etc. They want to have meaningful work.
But how does one do this when the poor are at the mercy of employers who only care about profits?
It is possible to help
those living in extreme poverty set up worker-owned businesses: they can own their own work, their own sweat, their own product.
How does the CDCA help? We help with the organizational process…getting committed people
together to begin the long process of becoming a cooperative. We help with the legal process, providing
capital so they can start, and training in aspects needed to run a
business. We help them find markets
abroad as well as in Nicaragua (although we have had more success with markets
abroad than in Nicaragua). We help with
funding and machinery…all as loans. Nothing is given but our time, because we have learned that when a
business is earned then a business has more of a chance to succeed. In other words: when people are invested in
the business then they are less likely to bail out for easy cash when times are
difficult.
Also after learning the hard way we’ve worked with several cooperatives that didn’t make it) we now provide training at the outset. All members of the co-ops with whom we work receive 40 hours of cooperativism and business management training, contribute sweat equity to the project and demonstrate a real commitment. To reiterate: a cooperative’s strength is in the personal investment of all its members; without this dedication, the business will likely fail.
We also offer Microenterprise Loans and a Revolving Loan Fund. The Revolving Loan Fund is to start new businesses or improve existing businesses. Loans have been given to the Women’s Sewing Cooperative to purchase cloth, which the co-op pays back into the Revolving Loan Fund.
It is important for Nicaraguans to be able to be employed within their own country, and it is very important to other nations’ economies as well, and especially to the United States, because one in every four Nicaraguans now lives outside the country, and money sent home from Nicaraguans living abroad is the equivalent of 15% of the money generated domestically in Nicaragua. This money sent home by Nicaraguans also is more than the total annual exports of Nicaragua.
Since 1994, the CDCA has supported the development of cooperative businesses and microenterprises in Nicaragua by: