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July: Our Cooperative Business Development Program

by Economic Well-being ProgramsNews and Events

At Center for Family Life, our Cooperative Business Development Program (CDP) organizes community members to create worker-owned cooperative businesses with the mission of economic and social justice. Through Center for Family Life’s holistic, neighborhood-rooted approach, CDP builds leadership and coaches cooperative members, cultivates relationships to strengthen the cooperative movement, and generates and shares best practices and models for cooperative growth. 

Here are some of the program’s recent highlights!

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Click the photo above to learn more about Up & Go’s services!

Up & Go celebrated its 7-year anniversary in May! When Up & Go launched in 2017 with the support of the CDP, it was the first worker-owned web platform for booking cleaning services in New York City. Since its inception, the cooperative has expanded to all five boroughs and beyond New York State. Last June, Up & Go officially launched in South Philadelphia and currently, Up & Go is looking to onboard new members in Detroit!

To book an appointment with Up & Go, click here.

The CDP offered new free workshops to cooperative members and to the broader community! These include computer literacy and English classes for domestic workers, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) trainings. These classes and trainings are important to cooperative entrepreneurs because they help them to build concrete skills that are essential to start and grow a small business.

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Our CDP joined The NYC Department of Small Business Services (SBS) as they celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative (WCBDI). The event included a panel discussion comprised of cooperative members who shared inspiring stories and program reflections. We are incredibly grateful for the WCBDI for supporting the creation, growth, and sustainability of cooperative businesses which provide a path for New Yorkers to access employment, build wealth, and gain entrepreneurial skills.

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Our Cooperative Business Development Program has helped incubate over 20 cooperatives since its inception and it continues to provide essential supportive resources, trainings, and classes to cooperative members and the broader community. Through this work, the CDP helps cooperative members obtain access to jobs with fair and stable salaries and to gain control over their time and the business.

Thank you for supporting us and our Cooperative Business Development Program. These highlights wouldn’t be possible without all of you!

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June: BrightlyⓇ Launches in Philadelphia

by Economic Well-being ProgramsNews and Events
Coop members cutting the cake during the celebration of the Brightly launch
Coop members cutting the cake during the celebration of the Brightly launch

BrightlyⓇ, the first worker-owned cleaning cooperative franchise in the United States, was launched in 2018 with enterprise incubation support from Center for Family Life in Sunset Park. Since then, CFL’s Cooperative Development Program (CDP) has supported Brightly’s expansion to five successful franchise outlets in New York City. We are thrilled that this month we were able to celebrate the launch of BrightlyⓇ South Philly, the sixth cooperative outlet in the BrightlyⓇ franchise and the first launched outside of New York! The Philadelphia expansion demonstrates the scalable impact of this powerful model that brings opportunity to domestic workers in the cleaning industry.  

The cleaning franchise provides low-income immigrant workers with the opportunity to receive a fair and livable wage and to avoid becoming subject to the wage exploitation that so many domestic workers face when attempting to negotiate prices and terms of work without any support. BrightlyⓇ provides workers with higher wages, stability, leadership roles and places them in control of the management and strategic growth planning for their business.

Coop members at the launch!

We are so grateful for grants provided by the WES Mariam Assefa Fund and the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation which enabled us to expand this incredible model outside of NYC, providing this business opportunity to even more low-income communities across the U.S. We are also very thankful for the Robin Hood Foundation for their support of this ground breaking work and for joining us at this celebratory launch. In partnership with the not-for-profit organization The Welcoming Center, BrightlyⓇ South Philly launched on June 2nd. At the launch party, which followed a year of trainings and preparation, new members shared their excitement and hopes for this new venture. New York City-based worker-owners joined the celebration and shared their congratulations with BrightlyⓇ Philly members. New Philadelphia members expressed feeling supported by those at the launch knowing that they can rely on their BrightlyⓇ colleagues in New York and Center for Family Life to be their trusted partners as they grow their business.

 

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A speaker during the launch

Karina Mongue, CFL’s Coop Developer shared how the launch of BrightlyⓇ South Philly demonstrates the reach that the franchise can have and how the launch was a culmination of CFL’s work to pilot innovative growth strategies. She shared how exciting it was to be a part of the dynamic and evolving cooperative franchise movement and stated that the expansion to Philadelphia is “just the beginning.”

 

Supporters cheering on the launch speakers!
Supporters cheering on the launch speakers!

At CFL, our Cooperative Development Program works to promote the mission of economic and social justice in partnership with worker-owners from communities across the U.S. The expansion of BrightlyⓇ and the values it stands for mirror our mission, and we could not be prouder that our Cooperative Development Program continues to grow and positively impact the lives of people in New York and beyond!

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July: CFL’s Cooperative Development Program Brings BrightlyⓇ Cleaning Cooperative to Philadelphia

by Economic Well-being ProgramsNews and Events

For this month’s Stories from the Field we talked to Carlos Chacon, one of our Excluded Workers Fund (EWF) navigators.

As you might remember, a high demand for aid depleted New York’s initial EWF Fund quickly, and many immigrant workers and their families were once again left out of receiving much needed financial aid. The NYC COVID-19 Immigrant Emergency Relief Program was created to provide direct cash assistance to those immigrant New Yorkers hardest hit by the economic crisis of the pandemic.

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October: Launch of Brightly® Washington Heights!

by Economic Well-being ProgramsNews and Events

In October, Center for Family Life celebrated the launch of the fourth cooperative to join Brightly® Cooperatives, a social franchise of worker-owned enterprises improving working conditions and revolutionizing economic opportunity for worker-owners (most of whom are immigrant women in the cleaning industry from low-wealth communities). We are incredibly proud of the worker-owners with whom we partner and our Cooperative Development Program staff who have worked for 14 years to dismantle systemic oppression and develop worker cooperatives grounded in principles of democracy, equity, solidarity, and community self-determination.