Welcome to redefining wealth through co-operatives

Welcome to our blog of “Redefining Wealth through Co-operatives”!

This blog will be a shared project of Dragana Panic, Nissar Dalal and myself, Karen Ford. We are all employees of Vancity Credit Union in Vancouver, BC, Canada’s Largest Credit Union. We are currently in Bologna, Italy on a Co-operative Studies Program joined by 13 other Vancity employees, one Board member and two BC Government Employees Union (BCGEU) representatives. Nissar and I both work in the Community Business department under Community Investments and Dragana works in the Security department.

You may be wondering what Vancity has to do with Bologna and perhaps even cooperatives. This may be a well known fact for some, but for many it’s news that Vancity as a credit union is a co-operative. A co-operative by definition is “a jointly owned commercial enterprise that produces and distributes goods and services and is run for the benefits of its owners [members]”. Bologna is a city in the Italian region of Emilia Romagna, which has flourished in the industrial era and continues to be successful due to its high concentration of co-operatives. The co-operatives of Emilia Romagna (approx. 5,224 in 2009) have contributed 35% of the regions’ GDP. They have gone from one of the poorest regions in 1970 to now the 3rd top region in Italy. They have the lowest family poverty in the whole of Italy bringing the gap closer together for income inequality and have an astounding low unemployment rate of approx. 4%. These leads us to believe that they have to have something right here!

At Vancity, we are interested in understanding what makes Emilia Romagna’s co-operative system so successful and figure out if and how we can adapt this into our environment at not only Vancity but also in our surrounding community to help them thrive and prosper in redefining wealth.

During our 10 day program we will be having the honour of learning from the well respected and talented Professor of Economics, Stefano Zamagni of the University of Bologna, the oldest university in Europe. Yesterday, our first day, started with a walking tour of Bologna where our guide gave us a brief history lesson of Bologna which helped us understand the establishment and culture of Bologna. The rest of our days and evenings will be filled up with lectures from Professor Stefano Zamagni and his wife Professor Vera Negri Zamagni along with site visits to many co-operatives in Bologna and the surrounding areas of Emilia Romagna.

We will be updating our blogs virtually everyday so please follow our journey and in the true spirit of the co-operative movement please help us spread the word!

Arrivederci!