Diomcoop was founded in Barcelona by a group of street vendors of sub-Saharan origin to provide sustainable employment, social care and community intervention for immigrants in vulnerable situations.
Established in 2017, the cooperative first organised to sell products on market stalls, but soon realised its members had a lot of other skills that could be put to use. It began to diversify its activities and now provides services including logistics and cleaning, catering, fashion, education and awareness raising.
The cooperative provides logistics and cleaning services to a range of clients including private individuals, business premises and local festivals, as well as offering catering services and sharing Black African cuisine at events and markets.
In 2018, Diomcoop set up the Diambaar fashion brand, which creates, produces and markets its own designs based on slow and sustainable fashion. Diambaar supports African producers and merchants and local social initiatives by purchasing fabrics in Africa and producing collections in its workshop in Barcelona.
Diomcoop also works with the city’s partners to develop public understanding of street vending and human rights, to change the way society views street vending.
The cooperative has delivered workshops in Barcelona’s schools, civic spaces and community centres, using an interactive board game that puts players in the position of a migrant arriving in Spain.
In 2019, it helped organise the first Migrant and Diverse Solidarity Economy Fair in Can Batlló, as well as a series of screenings of the film “DIOM” held in different civic centres across Barcelona.
The cooperative is democratically organised via shareholder meetings that feed into its governance council and working groups dedicated to each area of the business. Diomcoop operates on values of solidarity, mutual aid, honesty, transparency and a culture of peace, and says that “as cooperators, we want to position ourselves as active subjects of this society with rights and duties and to get out of the situation of invisibility in which we found ourselves. We believe in the power of self-organisation and mutual support to respond to collective problems, and that is why we are committed to cooperativism and the Social and Solidarity Economy”.
