Social Cooperatives

Cooperatives for trading, social and welfare purposes came to the fore during the 19th century within the compass of the Industrial Revolution, when both men and women were looking for ways to acquire greater independence and purchasing power, together with more opportunities for employment, socialisation, entrepreneurship and welfare assistance.

The first modern cooperative was established in 1844 at Rochdale, near Manchester, by some thirty textile workers. The first steps taken by workers mutual aid societies, the initial efforts of the cooperative clubs, and the first consumer and labour cooperatives were inspired by the notions of solidarity and mutual relationships between workers and between generations, and of democracy and pluralism that now constitute the rootstock of the world cooperative movement.

In keeping and in compliance with the values of the world cooperative movement, a workers-owned cooperative is formed and operates to secure continuous employment and the best economic, social and vocational conditions for its working members through its own associate management. The workers-owned cooperative is an organisation of worker-entrepreneurs whose aims include participation, democracy, risk sharing and the economic, social and vocational growth of all its members.

Social cooperatives are workers owned cooperatives.
At the end of the 1970s and the start of the 1980s, the concept and practical application of social entrepreneurship came into being in Italy. Its promoters chose the cooperative form for the purpose of organising their activities. They felt akin to the early-19th-century pioneers of cooperation and believed that it would enable them to promote the mutual assistance, independence and growth of persons living in a state of disabilisation, mental illness or drug addiction, and hence the subject of discrimination and exclusion from society and the labour market.

Italian social entrepreneurs chose the workers-owned cooperative as a collective starting point for economic, cultural and social endeavours designed to set in motion people's intelligence, imagination, willingness to act and capabilities, release energy and develop aptitudes enabling them to face up to the complexities of life: the cooperative, therefore, as a collective enterprise for upgrading social standing.

Many European Social Entrepreneurs conforms to these values and are engaged in these social cooperative experiences. This is not merely a formal accession to a juridical model of an enterprise. It is the construction of a method and an organisational model that draws added value from the active participation of all workers in the construction and management process.
We are of the opinion that an enterprise maybe successful taking as its yardstick the good practices of the workers-owned cooperative, in the sense of a group of persons who get together to create opportunities for good employment. We also feel that a cooperative must especially offer such opportunities to those who, whether on account of their disability, mental disorders, drug addiction, imprisonment and/or their exclusion from society, find it particularly difficult to gain access to the rights that go with citizenship, especially the right to work.

A social cooperative is concerned with the implementation of two production schedules:

• the formation of a product or a service (in our case, running a hotel);
• finding jobs for the disadvantaged, or, better, the construction of an entrepreneurial group (a social enterprise) capable of creating well-paid, quality job opportunities and chances of a career for everyone.

Here you can download many reading documents about the development of social cooperatives