An exposed peninsula of Queens, New York, the Rockaways were one of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy. When the storm hit in October, 2012, it flooded the neighborhood, destroying thousands of homes and businesses, displacing hundreds of families and disrupting daily life in the community for months.

Yet, the daily challenges of life in this impoverished community of color began decades before the storm landed. Residents explain that they have been weathering the slow hurricanes of poverty, unemployment, poor education and lack of access to healthcare for years. Hurricane Sandy merely accentuated the destruction wrought by these continuous crises.

Begun in the spring of 2013, Cooperativa Rockaways is an initiative to rebuild after Sandy in a way that addresses both the storm’s impact and the long-term systemic issues in the neighborhood. The program’s goal is to equip Far Rockaway residents with the skills and financing to launch small, cooperatively owned businesses that fill a need in their community. More than 40 residents have already joined the weekly, three-month training program–people who now work for others as babysitters, house cleaners, exterminators and upholsterers but dream of being their own bosses and keeping wealth inside their neighborhood. So far, the group has developed plans to launch five cooperative businesses: a construction company, a bakery, a health food store, an entertainment collective and a pupuseria. As the tourist season approaches, they are now in the process of turning these plans into realities.

Support the community of Far Rockaway by donating to the investment fund for these businesses. Successful cooperatives will re-invest back into the program to launch other worker-owned businesses, a cycle that will create a cooperative network that benefits every member business and the broader community.

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Most people know the history of this factory, formerly known as Republic Windows and Doors, which was closed in a financial scandal and subsequently occupied by its workers for illegal treatment in 2008.  This struggle captured the imagination of the country which was going through its own financial scandal and economic crisis and seemed to suggest we might not have to take our fates sitting down.

In February 2012, the same workers who occupied and won their fight for fair treatment came to The Working World and asked for our help to buy their old factory and re-open it as a worker-owned cooperative.  In August, we invested $665,000 to buy the needed equipment and start the business.  We are now proud to officially open under worker-control.

It has taken an incredible amount of work and dedication to achieve this victory.  To begin, the workers had to fight for the basic right to be at the table and buy the business.  They then had to dismantle the old factory, move it across the city to a more appropriate and affordable space, and put it back together again piece by piece.  Each of these steps the workers did on their own, and in the process they demonstrated incredible potential that had never been tapped in their old jobs.

In many ways, this is not the story of a few workers, but of all of America.  The old window factory was closed despite being profitable, its workers sent into unemployment despite their immense potential.  As we watch our once proud workforce dismantled and impoverished by forces and motivations not of their own, we ask if these crises present opportunities.  The workers of New Era want to succeed not just for themselves, but for their country, to show that downsizing does not have to be the end of the story, that there is way forward if we take our fates into our own hands.  The possibilities that are flowering within the walls of their new factory has potential to flower across the country.

To the community, we ask your support for worker cooperatives as a viable and dignified solution to our economic challenges; to support finance like The Working World which puts the needs of people and community above that of profit; and in particular, we ask you to support New Era and buy windows made with integrity and pride in the USA.

Browse New Era Windows vinyl replacement windows.

Our friends at Cooperativa CAMECHI saw this problem and wanted to fix it.  The President of the Coop, Paulo Reyes, who doubles as a biology professor at the local university, began to experiment.  He found that by fermenting certain low-cost ingredients with the right mix of microbial cultures, it was possible to produce a feed that was much more affordable than mainstream products but comparable in nutritional value.

That’s when the Cooperative came to The Working World.  The workers wanted a loan for machinery to produce this new formula on a large scale and take advantage of what appeared to be an untapped market.  Today, less than a year after our initial investment, the Cooperative sells to over 20 intermediaries throughout the Nicaraguan countryside and has regular orders totaling over 7000 pounds of feed per week.

Thanks to TWW financing and the hard work of these worker-owners, small producers are able to compete again, and Cooperativa CAMECHI is on the fast track to long-term, sustainable growth.

We are very excited to share that our campaign to raise funds to continue building a New Era for the US was an incredible success!

Not only did we reach our goal of raising $20,000, we beat it. In the last month and a half, we received $3,547 in individual donations through Causes.com and over $28,700 in large and small donations through the mail.

Our team is extremely grateful for this support. These donations cover a crucial portion of our costs that will allow us to make more projects like New Era Windows in the next years and to continue to put people above capital with zero-debt finance and worker ownership. We will keep growing the community of those who want to see this change and will keep our current members up to date on how things evolve.

In addition to the success of this fundraising campaign, the exposure has brought a number of new investors to our fund who are each loaning us between $10,000 and $100,000 that we can use to lend out over and over to aspiring, worker-controlled enterprises. Investments from people to our fund like there are the crucial step that allows an alternative financial fund to compete on real scale and have real impact in the world.

Thank you all for your fantastic support. We couldn’t do any of this without our community of dedicated people. Together, we can build a New Economy!

Please, join the movement and sign up to stay up to date about our projects this year!