November/December 1985 RAIN goes to Tokyo to invite a Japanese plant into the city, that's not a self-reliant city. When a city tries to get the federal government to give it a major grant for a certain development task, that's not a self-reliant city. So you can have an entrepreneurial city, you can have an aggressive city, you can have a city that's very sophisticated in its economic development strategy, but that will not necessarily be a city that emphasizes the criteria of a homegrown economy or local self-reliance. One other comment is that I'm finding that although there is a great deal of creativity occurring now in entrepreneurial development around the country, there's much less creativity going on in the social service networks or the city governments. The self-reliant city embraces those different pieces as a whole. RAIN: How can the citizens of a community help promote the self-reliant city concept in their own cities? Morris: It's the citizens of a city that will make the metaphor true or not. What the mayor of St. Paul is doing is selling a metaphor. He's saying, we will become a self-reliant city. We will generate a significant amount of our wealth from our internal resources. We will use our ingenuity to develop new ways of doing things. But mostly a mayor is a tribal chief. He develops the metaphor, he develops the message, but it's the people of a city that either buy into it, and by doing so translate that philosophy into actual projects and activities, or do And so what we're doing in St. Paul at the present tii in a number of different ways is reaching out to wider and wider segments of the local population to engage them in discussions about what the concept means in their own particular realm: what it means for the housewife, what it means for the truckdriver, what it means for the city employee. Let me give you one example. There's a local woman who three years ago was making peanut butter cookies for her kids, and decided that her measuring cup was inappropriate for the task she was doing because every time she had a new ingredient, she had to wash it out thoroughly. So she invented a new measuring cup. The cup has a movable bottom, and the marks on the side of the cup are actually grooves, and you can lock in the bottom at different levels so you can measure the amount that you want, and when you're finished you can push the bottom up to the top and use a knife to just wipe it off in one motion. So it's easily cleaned. She just got a patent last fall, and she's now marketing the product. Well, there's a person who looked at an ordinary, everyday way of doing things with different eyes and has created new wealth by making a process more efficient. That's an average person who has much to teach other people in the community. □ □ ACCESS: Community Economics Economic Development Incorporated (EDI) PO Box 4587 Boulder, CO 80306-4587 EDI is a venture capital firm that specializes in worker-owned companies controlled by minorities or people who have been economically disadvantaged. It was formed in 1983 by a group of investors who wanted to test the possibility using venture capital techniques, rather than charity or government programs, to create employment for those with limited economic opportunities. By building leadership skills and providing needed start-up capital, EDI helps create businesses that will enable low-income people gain more control over their communihes and their own lives. EDI is in business to make money for its investors in a manner that promotes certain social and political goals. Some of the social and political criteria that guide EDI's investment decisions include the following: provision of safe and healthy working conditions, a commitment to worker ownership and participation, enhancement of local self-reliance, protection of the environment, and generation of new jobs in low-income communities. In addition to providing capital for new business ventures, EDI offers a managerial service for its clients that assists in developing managerial skills, conducting market analysis, creating a business plan, and so on. —FLS Trusteeship Institute, Inc. Baker Road Shutesbury, MA 01072 Trusteeship Institute (TI) promotes the development of cooperative communities in America. It derives its inspiration primarily from two sources: Mahatma Gandhi's theory of trusteeship and the success of the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain. Gandhi's theory of trusteeship holds that all political and economic activities should be democratically controlled by those affected by them and managed, in trust, for the welfare of society as a whole. TI's founder and president, Terry Mollner, believes that the best example of trusteeship in practice in a modern industrial society can be found in the Mondragon Cooperatives (see RAIN X:4, page 14). Mondragon is the top producer of appliances and tools in Spain. It has created 20,000 worker-owned jobs as well as a sophisticated cooperative community that includes a cooperative bank with nearly 400,000 depositors, a network of consumer cooperatives with 120,000 members, a cooperative education system, cooperative housing projects, and a cooperative insurance company. Trusteeship Institute promotes the development of similar communities in this country by providing assistance to groups creating new worker-owned businesses and helping establish financial institutions operated according to trusteeship principles. Additionally, TI organizes conferences and does consulting on socially responsible investing, and teaches people how to establish community land trusts, form nonprofit organizations, and run meetings and other affairs cooperatively and efficiently. The institute also offers three publications written by Terry Mollner: Mondragon Cooperatives and Trusteeship (1982, $22); Trusteeship: The Inevitable Alternative to Capitalism and Socialism (1982, $1.50); and Mondragon: A Third Way (1983, $1.50). "Cooperativas," a 20- minute film about the Mondragon Cooperatives, is also available for rental from the institute. —FLS
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