Entrepreneurship
Sustainable Growth Cooperatives are riding the wave of changes. They represent a valuable and secure employment and entrepreneurial option for young people. Moreover, they give young workers and entrepreneurs access to ownership and control over their own future. For excluded youth, cooperatives provide not only work inclusion but also sense of belonging and place where to be heard.
To illustrate our point, CECOP-CICOPA Europe has decided to give a voice directly to young people and those working with them. Here is the third and last video of the series. It comes from the Cooperative ERSE, founded in Tuscany by a group of young environmental officers.
"Our education and training started in university and continued afterwards while working. Each of us had gained a great deal of experience in the field, but because of a difficult economic context, none of those were long-term experiences. Then our trajectories met and we got together" explains Filippo. Why is ERSE a cooperative of independent workers? "Because it’s democratic, mutualist and people-focused. It aims at improving the working conditions of the members. A cooperative also entails a lot of responsibilities. At the end it comes down to running an enterprise and this represents for us an added value." Watch it now!
