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The 2021 North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship is now open!

Fred

Please check out the Housing and Land edition of the North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship. The North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship is a five-month fellowship focused on Black American Cooperative Economics. North Star is centered on the history of Black cooperative economic thought and practice. Our 2021 North Star Fellowship will focus on housing cooperatives and land trust models for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. As a cohort, fellows will explore the power and landscape of resident-controlled community ownership models that are permanently affordable and provide dignified housing options for our communities. We are forming a cohort of fellows that have a vision of collective living, permanently affordable, and community-controlled land and co-operative housing that will provide a space for our communities to have access to spiritual, cultural, and economically sound options.

Also, new this year, we are only accepting applications in groups of 2 or more. Apply here! And for more information please contact Danielle Mkali at dmkali@nexuscp.org or Nkuli Shongwe at nshongwe@nexuscp.org.

North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship 2018/2019 cohort sessions have started off well! The first cohort meeting dug into the history of cooperatives and the society in which we live in that bread a necessity for cooperatives to exist. We also discussed how modern-day society makes it difficult for black businesses to remain afloat without systematic structures trying to tear them down. Our second session dove into the role capitalism plays into the overall success of a cooperative economy and the need to bring it to fruition. And our most recent cohort session dissected the cooperative bylaws and development – what makes cooperatives successful and what foundations are necessary for keeping the cooperative stable. It asked a difficult question: what is most important to the board – profit or the people? Through this, many of the members revealed the ingrained roots of capitalism and have continued to tackle the multilayered issue of social inequality with curiosity and understanding. The pessimism that surrounds our community due to the weight of social inequality can be back breaking, however, this is only true if you allow it to consume you.