Breakfast and discussion: Healthy food, strong bonds. How to start a cooperative


Saturday 11th May | 11:30 a.m. | barStudio
Discussion and breakfast: Healthy food, strong bonds. How to start a cooperative before the screening of "Utopia Revisited"
Discussion in Polish only
Partner: barStudio, Kooperatywa Dobrze

We’re going to discuss various aspects of the food cooperative movement: its core values, whether it promotes healthy living and true democracy, problems faced by cooperatives, and how to start your own co-op. Over the course of the discussion practical and theoretical experts will aim to verbalize the intermingling of social and economic aspects of co-ops. We’ll debate the accuracy and relevance of Edward Abramowski’s 19th century vision of cooperatives as “a social school teaching people to deal with their own affairs, organize them, act as one and with solidarity, reform the conditions of their existence with their own hands and minds; a place of practical learning about the complex economic and social mechanisms of modern living and ways to manage them”.

Starting at 10:30 AM, join us at barStudio for breakfast prepared in collaboration with the “Dobrze” Food Cooperative. Expect plates full of delicious new vegetables! “Dobrze” works with 30 farms year-round, shortening the food sourcing chain in order to regain control over food quality as well as the impact and influence of food production on people and the environment.

Moderator:
Bohdan Skrzypczak – adjunct at the Chair of Social Pedagogy in the Institute for Social Prevention and Resocialization at the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences and Resocialization of the University of Warsaw. Chairman of the CAL Association.

Guests:
Nina Józefina Bąk – co-founder of the “Dobrze” Food Cooperative in Warsaw, for the last few years Bąk has been actively involved with popularizing new-wave cooperative entrepreneurship and economy for the common good.

Anna Urbańska – founder, coordinator, and chairwoman of Kooperatywa Grochowska, the first food co-op in Poland. Her TEDx talk Zrób sobie kooperatywę [Starting a co-op] covered the influence of cooperatives on local development and the strengthening of social bonds.

Marta Kurkiewicz – urban activist. Having launched the Rural Food Cooperative in the Low Beskids region, Kurkiewicz currently co-leads the Na Zdrowie co-op.