One of BCI’s main goals of 2024 is to establish a beading cooperative and a sandal cooperative for the Maasai and Batwa tribes, respectively, to empower these communities. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, “The cooperative corporation is a business owned and controlled by the people who use its services.” Cooperatives are starkly different from traditional investor-owned firms as their focus is shifted from investors making a profit to operating to serve the communities that own cooperatives. The beading and sandal cooperatives would ensure that the Maasai and Batwa tribes are self-sufficient, and it would open a world of job opportunities. I had the pleasure of interviewing Rishab Mahendra, PhD student at the University of Missouri in the Agricultural Economics program, to understand cooperatives’ overarching goals and how cooperatives operate.

What are Some Examples of Cooperatives?

According to a University of Wisconsin study, there are more than 40,000 cooperatives in the US. There are fewer cooperatives today due to cooperatives of similar agendas merging together to form one collective unit. Although they are not technically termed as cooperatives, labor unions are an example of specific cooperatives where people take collective action to combat a specific problem in the community. A majority of labor unions in the United States fall under the agricultural sector. A common example is farmer labor unions fighting for farmers’ working rights. The reward is not necessarily monetary gain; it is a change to the communities’ working environments. There has also been a rise in self-help cooperatives in India, which serve to empower women and eradicate poverty. Similarly, our Beading Cooperative aims to empower women of the Maasai tribes, offering them a chance to make a living for themselves through bringing together a creative community. 

How is Profit Used/Distributed in Cooperatives?

While profits are distributed to owners based on investments in investor-owned firms, profit in cooperatives is distributed based on the amount of ongoing support (patronage) that owners put toward the business. More people are responsible for the cooperative; therefore, more people benefit from the successes of the cooperative. Profit is put back in the cooperative to purchase materials for the manufacturing process and is also put toward personal income. Raw materials are often more expensive for cooperatives than they are for traditional investor firms. As the cooperative progresses, product prices are lowered, and the profit primarily goes towards savings.

Combating Challenges as a Community

Starting a business, especially finding initial seed funding, is challenging. Searching for the right market to target can feel like going up a steep mountain. We can look at it this way though: If people have the willpower and work towards a common goal, one person doesn’t have to carry all the weight on their shoulders and cooperatives can progress much faster. In many cooperatives, organizations work alongside communities to instruct them and support them through the process of creating a product. After all, what makes a cooperative function are the communities behind them. Cooperatives work for the people and have the capability of bringing communities together through the craft of necklaces or sandals: vibrant pieces of art that preserve and share their culture to the rest of the world. The cooperatives that BCI will put in place can help pull communities out of poverty by giving them a predictable income during uncertain times.