CoopEcon 2013

Join us October 4-6 for the second Southeast-wide gathering sponsored by the Southern Grassroots Economies Project. This conference is for people who live in the US South* and are: 1) interested in launching a cooperative business OR 2) planning to transition an existing non-cooperative business to a cooperative model OR 3) already employed in or own a cooperative business. *Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia People from across the South who are determined to take control of their economic futures will convene in Epes, Alabama at the Rural Training Center of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives for CoopEcon 2013. Joining them will be co-op developers, business experts, and individuals engaged in building community-based enterprises who will share their skills and knowledge for two days in the heart of the South. There is a vibrant and rapidly growing movement of community-based and worker-owned businesses across the United States, and internationally. SGEP is connecting to this movement and helping spark it’s growth in the South. We are bringing people and organizations with long histories of cooperative and community-based business development together with those just getting started. We are starting to build collaborative resources and tools to help us expand our work. And we are building trust with each other—a currency that will be increasingly vital as the economic structures that many now take for granted continue to crumble and fail our communities.