{"id":3076,"date":"2015-07-14T13:33:27","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T17:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/?page_id=3076"},"modified":"2017-04-25T15:39:03","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T19:39:03","slug":"about-us","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/about-us\/","title":{"rendered":"About Us"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row background_style=&#8221;full&#8221;][vc_column]<section class=\"hero-slider centered-text-slider  \"><ul class=\"slides\"><li class=\"overlay \"><div class=\"background-image-holder\"><img width=\"700\" height=\"459\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/media.193.35.large_.jpg\" class=\"background-image\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/media.193.35.large_.jpg 700w, https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/media.193.35.large_-300x197.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/div><div class=\"container vertical-align\"><div class=\"row\"><div class=\"col-sm-12 text-center ebor-slider-content\"><h1>Our History<\/h1>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Our story begins with the workers within the walls of the recovered factories\u2014<em>las f\u00e1bricas recuperadas<\/em>\u2014in post-crisis Argentina.<\/h3>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/section>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/6&#8243;][vc_column_text]\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;2\/3&#8243;][vc_column_text]\n<h3>The Argentinean Collapse<\/h3>\n<p>By 2003, a decade of economic reform and the resulting financial collapse had left Argentina\u2019s industrial economy an empty shell of its former self\u00a0and almost half the population below the poverty line. With their backs to the wall, many workers began to take their fate into their own hands, occupying formerly bankrupt and abandoned businesses and reopening them as democratically owned and managed worker cooperatives. These businesses became known as the <em>empresas<\/em><em>\u00a0recuperadas<\/em>, or the recovered businesses. In the face of tremendous hardship, these workers were beginning to rebuild the economy of Argentina from the bottom up.<\/p>\n<p>After learning about the recovered businesses, The Working World\u2019s founder Brendan Martin decided to leave Wall Street to find a way to support the burgeoning cooperative moment. In 2004, he found his opportunity after approaching Avi Lewis at a film screening of\u00a0<em>The Take<\/em>, a documentary about the worker-led social movement. Like all other businesses, the\u00a0recovered businesses needed financing to support their growth. In reality, what these businesses needed\u2014what the world needed\u2014was\u00a0to reimagine finance to put the needs of people before profits. Soon after meeting, Brendan and Avi founded The Working World to provide much needed investment capital to the cooperatives of Argentina.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/6&#8243;][vc_column_text]\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row background_style=&#8221;image-left&#8221; css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1437172132884{background: #ffffff url(https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Crometal-Cooperative.png?id=3109) !important;}&#8221;][vc_column][vc_column_text]\n<h4>What these burgeoning\u00a0businesses needed&#8211;<em>what the world needed<\/em>&#8211;was to reimagine finance to put the needs of people before profits.<\/h4>\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/6&#8243;][vc_column_text]\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;2\/3&#8243;][vc_column_text]\n<h3>Our Entry to Argentina<\/h3>\n<p>The next year, we began to pilot investments to recovered businesses. Instead of following traditional investment underwriting techniques, we decided that we would put finance in the hands of working people without making them put down collateral or take a debt burden that could threaten their wellbeing. We tied our loan returns to project success to make sure we would never take back a single dime that we didn\u2019t help generate. We began to pioneer non-extractive finance directly to cooperatives in Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n<p>It was a match made in heaven. Despite the prevailing conventional belief that these businesses were risky investments, we were starting to see returns on our investments in just a few months in spite of our non-extractive model. We learned that workers weren\u2019t just assets on a balance sheet to be cut as traditional business would have us believe, but rather incredibly valuable partners in investment.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/6&#8243;][vc_column_text]\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row machine_padding=&#8221;no-pad&#8221;][vc_column][vc_single_image image=&#8221;3217&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221;][vc_column_text]\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Brendan and Cooperativa Desde el Pie<br \/>\nBuenos Aires, Argentina. 2005.<\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/6&#8243;][vc_column_text]\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;2\/3&#8243;][vc_column_text]Since opening The Working World\u2019s first office in Buenos Aires, our team has been pioneering the principles of non-extractive finance with incredible success. Since we opened our office in 2005, we have invested millions of dollars in Argentina while maintaining a 98% repayment rate. Inspired by the success in Argentina, in 2008 The Working World opened a new office in Le\u00f3n, Nicaragua. While the challenges were different, the same techniques that worked in Argentina worked in Nicaragua as well.<\/p>\n<p>In 2012, we began our biggest venture yet, launching our third loan fund in New York to prove the durability of our model in a very different context. Even as one of the world\u2019s centers of finance and wealth, New York City is suffering from high and persistent unemployment and poverty. But there is much more at stake: our world is suffering from an extractive financial system that values profits more than the lives of people, one that is willing to risk tipping the climate past the point of no return to generate more wealth in the short term. We\u2019re here to prove our model of non-extractive community finance can be the alternative that we\u2019ve been waiting for. This is a different kind of a finance for a different kind of business, and we\u2019re proving different can be better.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/6&#8243;][vc_column_text]\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column]<div class=\"action-strip-1\"><div class=\"text-center\"><span class=\"alt-font\">Learn more about how we invest.<\/span><i class=\"icon pe-7s-look\"><\/i>\n\t\t\t\t<a class=\"text-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/our-mission\/\" target=\"_blank\">Learn More <i class=\"icon arrow_right\"><\/i><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\">We&#8217;ve partnered with:<\/h4>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=&#8221;1\/4&#8243;][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;8px&#8221;][vc_single_image image=&#8221;4007&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221; onclick=&#8221;custom_link&#8221; img_link_target=&#8221;_blank&#8221; link=&#8221;http:\/\/becomingeo.org\/&#8221;][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=&#8221;1\/4&#8243;][vc_single_image image=&#8221;4008&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221; onclick=&#8221;custom_link&#8221; img_link_target=&#8221;_blank&#8221; link=&#8221;http:\/\/council.nyc.gov\/html\/pr\/061914budget.shtml&#8221;][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=&#8221;1\/4&#8243;][vc_single_image image=&#8221;4013&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221; onclick=&#8221;custom_link&#8221; img_link_target=&#8221;_blank&#8221; link=&#8221;https:\/\/bealocalist.org\/&#8221;][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=&#8221;1\/4&#8243;][vc_single_image image=&#8221;4010&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221; onclick=&#8221;custom_link&#8221; link=&#8221;http:\/\/theworkerslab.com\/&#8221;][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1457476282504{background-color: #ffffff !important;}&#8221;][vc_column][vc_column_text]\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\">We&#8217;ve been featured in:<\/h4>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=&#8221;1\/4&#8243;][vc_single_image image=&#8221;4014&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221; onclick=&#8221;custom_link&#8221; img_link_target=&#8221;_blank&#8221; link=&#8221;http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/03\/30\/magazine\/who-needs-a-boss.html?_r=0&#8243;][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=&#8221;1\/4&#8243;][vc_single_image image=&#8221;4015&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221; onclick=&#8221;custom_link&#8221; img_link_target=&#8221;_blank&#8221; link=&#8221;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PHzE2ZiXZAI&#8221;][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=&#8221;1\/4&#8243;][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;48px&#8221;][vc_single_image image=&#8221;4016&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221; onclick=&#8221;custom_link&#8221; img_link_target=&#8221;_blank&#8221; link=&#8221;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PHzE2ZiXZAI&#8221;][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=&#8221;1\/4&#8243;][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;8px&#8221;][vc_single_image image=&#8221;4017&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221; onclick=&#8221;custom_link&#8221; img_link_target=&#8221;_blank&#8221; link=&#8221;http:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/commonomics\/a-co-op-story-people-s-construction-in-rockaway&#8221;][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row background_style=&#8221;full&#8221;][vc_column][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/6&#8243;][vc_column_text] [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;2\/3&#8243;][vc_column_text] The Argentinean Collapse By 2003, a decade of economic reform and the resulting financial collapse had&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3076"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3076"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4232,"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3076\/revisions\/4232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}