Andrew Delmonte, executive director of Cooperation Buffalo, is hoping for great attendance for Saturday's Co-Op Fest at Five Points Bakery. While they will be available Saturday to discuss the minutiae of cooperative businesses, Delmonte wants the focus to be on fun.
"This is just a party, a chance to introduce people to what cooperative economics looks like, what it looks like to have a community of cooperatively-owned businesses," said Delmonte, who expects up to 10 local cooperatives at Saturday's event.
They stress, again, it's not all about business.
"We're also going to have kids games, music, live music, and good food."
The dictionary defines a cooperative as "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-controlled enterprise."
The cooperative model provides benefits not only for workers and employers, Delmonte says, but also for shoppers who find an appeal in "businesses that are owned by the workers or by the community themselves, rather than by just faraway shareholders or one person who's 's taken a lot of money off the table."
Hosted by Five Points Bakery, 44 Brayton St. in Buffalo, Co-Op Fest runs from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Beer, wine and nonalcoholic beverages will be for sale. Proceeds will benefit Cooperation Buffalo.
The festival takes place prior to the August 1 deadline to apply for Cooperation Buffalo's fellowship program. The course runs for 11 weeks and is for those interested in
an economy based on cooperation, not competition. Delmonte expects 30 to 35 people to enter the program.
Terra Dumas, one of the founders of Farmer Pirates Compost, went through the program. Started in 2012, Farmer Pirates, Dumas said, collected 1.6 million pounds of food scraps last year. Instead of waste heading to the landfill, the discarded food was turned into compost. With a history of taking part in cooperatives, Dumas found the fellowship as a chance to "get reacclimated and spend time with other folks looking to learn more about cooperatives and to refresh and get reinvigorated."
Delmonte sees interest in cooperatives growing. The fellowship program, he hopes, sparks interest from "folks who maybe already own a business, but are thinking about transitioning it by selling it to their workers; or just folks from the community who are activists, organizers, professional service providers who want to know more about getting involved in the cooperative economy."