KoopFabrika presents this year’s training and advice sessions with the aim of being a “companion on the journey of these living projects”
KoopFabrika presents this year’s training and advice sessions with the aim of being a “companion on the journey of these living projects”
KoopFabrika presents this year’s training and advice sessions with the aim of being a “companion on the journey of these living projects”
KoopFabrika is a support program for the implementation of professional projects and socio-economic initiatives based on cooperative social entrepreneurship. Today KoopFabrika presented its plans for this year in Donostia.
The presentation held on November 17 was attended by representatives from OlatuKoop, the LANKI Institute of Co-Operative Research, the GEZKI Institute of Cooperative Law and Social Economy (University of the Basque Country), and the Department of Economic Promotion, Tourism and Rural Areas of the Provincial Government of Gipuzkoa, sponsor of the program.
This year, KoopFabrika’s School of Cooperative Entrepreneurship will start on January 23 with twelve training sessions, on Mondays and Wednesdays, running through the 1st of March. The sessions will be held in Donostia, at the Euskaltzaindia headquarters, and registration will be open until January 16 at koopfabrika.eus.
After this training, KoopFabrika will offer an accompaniment process for those projects that require it. “To do this, we’re going to launch a network of fellow travelers who have a lot to say in this KoopFabrika ecosystem to help people in a personalized way with the projects on their journey”, explained Leire Udabe Aizpurua, member of KoopFabrika’s coordination group.
Additionally, several sessions of KoopFabrika Zabaltzen will be held in various places in Gipuzkoa to discuss different topics related to Transformative Social Economics and Social Entrepreneurship. The purpose of these sessions will be to approach Social Entrepreneurship, and thus KoopFabrika, from the perspective of different topics.
On behalf of the Provincial Council, Joseba Amondarain Senperena highlighted three KoopFabrika values: the Basque language, cooperativism, and women’s participation, as well as commitment to the people and the territory.
In fact, KoopFabrika has worked on dozens of projects over the years. Thus, one way or another, since 2017, KoopFabrika has participated in the implementation of countless living projects that have had an impact on the transformation of our society. “More than 400 people have gone through our training and promotion sessions and we have promoted about 100 projects. We believe that this gives us a powerful foundation from which to keep working and that these data show that KoopFabrika’s training and knowledge are useful for groups that want to launch their projects,” Udabe explained.
An example of this is the participation in the presentation of various projects that were launched through their participation in KoopFabrika. Unax Seges Intxausti is a member of the Auzo|co sukaldea project in Herrera. In Seges’ words, “KoopFabrika gave us the means to bring the idea we had in mind to reality. It’s been a real learning experience to create a community kitchen, created as a company, but based on community work.”
Maider Gaztelumendi Fagoaga, promoter of the ethical fashion project Pluma, states that thanks to KoopFabrika, she chose to open a social line of work: “when I was starting out, I made a business plan as a freelancer, but KoopFabrika helped me consider other values in my project. My accompaniment was also very interesting. It was a great help to me after my training period”.
Gorka Julio Hurtado, member of the Talaios cooperative and fellow traveler to KoopFabrika, adds that they went from saying “there’s a difference” to feeling that “there’s a change”. He ended by saying that “we’re seeing that it’s our fellow travelers who generate change. To the extent that it’s a process, that change occurs not only in their respective projects, but also on the way to the transformation we seek”.