Cooperatives, Peace and Hunger
By Clem Nilan, General Manager
My wife and I received many lovely cards this holiday season wishing for peace on earth. Peace has been elusive on this planet. On the global scale, the United Nations main purpose is to keep peace throughout the world. The United Nations designated 2012 as the “International Year of Cooperatives,” honoring co-ops’ important role in promoting peace through social responsibility and caring for others.
Peace means different things in different contexts. Most Americans define peace as an absence of war. It’s time we expand this definition. Is there peace in our community when an insidious level of hunger and homelessness exists just below the surface of our vision? The Hunger Council of Chittenden County reports that levels of hunger and homelessness are skyrocketing. The Council estimates that at least 300 school-age children in Chittenden County are homeless; this is assumed to be an underestimation of the problem. The Boys and Girls Club of Burlington is now serving supper 5 nights a week as many children and families don’t have food at home. If people are hungry and homeless, there is a fundamental inequality in our society. Our present society concentrates wealth into the hands of a few. This inequity leaves more and more Americans on the outside. Any rational human being would call this an unjust structure in which our most precious resource, our own children, are homeless and hungry. In such conditions there can't be peace.
Our Co-op and other co-ops across the world are conducting business fairly and in a way that improves the lives of those most in need and to encourage respect for rights and freedoms. Cooperatives , from the very beginning of the cooperative movement, have believed joining together voluntarily and democratically would benefit all participants, not just the privileged few.
What is our Co-op doing to promote social justice? Our primary outreach goal is to make sure all the children in our community are fed. We’re lucky to live in a community with many local organizations working toward this same goal. Last year we redeemed over a million dollars in food stamps (3SquaresVT). We funneled over $40,000 to the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf. Our Food For All program offered over $160,000 in savings to those most in need in our community. And our COTS holiday tree sale netted $8,900 to provide shelter for the homeless.
It’s no secret our national food system is broken. To secure a better future, we need to grow more of our own food and rebuild our food system. Here at Onion River Co-op, we are actively planning for a future with a strong local and regional food system. This may (and probably will) take decades to rebuild. We are making remarkable progress and laying a strong foundation, working together with farmers and other cooperatives.
The co-op value of self-help is a reminder we need to put the goals of all of us before our own wants and needs My good friend Walden Swanson describes this as our need to leave behind the “me society” and enter the “we society.” Individually we walk on this earth for only a short while. I'm reminded every day by my daughter's fragile health of our responsibilities to care for others.
There can't be peace if children in our community are hungry and homeless. For 2012, the International Year of Cooperatives, we have an opportunity to celebrate the great successes of co-ops worldwide… and recognize that we still have important work to do.