Freedom Culture House (FCH) is a multidisciplinary creative space for artists and cultural practitioners of the African Diaspora based in Oakland Ca. We have invested in curating a culturally connected and safe space for creatives , practitioners , and social entrepreneurs in our Oakland and extended Bay area Black community.

At Freedom Culture House artists and cultural practitioners will have access to develop their work and also partner with Alena on events and art activism opportunities at FCH and out in the community. FCH has the flexibility to serve as a exclusive work space , live and work space(limited) , and event space for our community. Alena Museum is driven by communal care and self-reliance and the liberation of intentional work of Cultural Place-keeping with projects like FCH is how we show up.

They would collaborate with Alena’s team to plan and curate our installations for the public art activation project. Providing space for community when needed, cultural artifacts, materials and resources to other artists. With this strategy, we allow collaborations for Black solidarity and liberation work. 

The Mamas Connect Resource Navigation project aims to formalize and enhance the support previously provided by the volunteer board and founder of Black Mamas Village (BMV). While this assistance has always been available to the community, it has been distributed among BMV volunteers without a dedicated stipend, making it challenging to sustain and expand these efforts. This initiative will provide a stipend of $1,000 per month to one mama, empowering her to serve as a resource navigator. This position is not employment; rather, it serves to model a community health worker/organizer approach. This stipend offers guaranteed income that can enhance overall economic stability of the resource navigator by addressing immediate needs for food and housing security while supporting other moms simultaneously. Additionally, this model minimizes the risk of jeopardizing other supports and subsidies for the resource navigator, such as childcare and housing assistance.

The resource navigator will facilitate connections for families in need by screening for rental assistance and providing access to food and housing security resources through the Black Mamas Village Food Pantry, Free Store, Emergency Assistance Program, and various community partnerships, including free and low-cost dental care, and childcare.  Ultimately, the Mamas Connect Resource Navigation project aims to foster grassroots resilience and solidarity, laying the groundwork for long-term community empowerment through collective action and creating a stronger, more interconnected community.

Black Sustainability, Inc. is thrilled to launch the beta test period for Black Sustainability Institute’s (BSI) e-learning Cohort and enhance the Black Sustainability Network platform to cultivate skills, foster resilience, and strengthen networks within local communities. As we build upon our commitment to black solidarity, our goal is to increase the accessibility of various mapping tools including our global practitioner directory, Justice40 fund tracking & environmental risk analysis features coupled with regionally specific culturally relevant education. The BSI platform integrates feedback from experts within the established twelve (12)  interdisciplinary Industry House focus areas reflective of the solidarity economy i.e. Sustainable Agriculture, Alternative Economics, Alternative Energy, Education & Cultural Preservation, Climate & Environmental Justice, Community Development, Eco-building, Green Lifestyle, Emergency Preparedness, Wholistic Health, Water, and Waste, offering a unique opportunity for participants to dive into innovative sustainability courses with an inaugural cohort.

The BSI cohort is scheduled to begin Spring of 2025 and provides stipends for 10 cohort members that will serve as beta test users of our Black Sustainability Institute. The mapping tools provide recent data of current environmental risks, service provider skill sets and the geo-location of members. And workshops, in-person and virtual projects and case studies create a diverse green career pipeline rooted in homegrown approaches which promote economic circularity. 

The Buffalo Food Equity Network is a Black women-led network assembling underrepresented communities and advocates to build movements that improve all levels of the food landscape in Western NY. We’ve recently developed this new mission statement and thus are planning to host a series of “people’s assemblies” to strategize exactly how to build a movement for a new food economy in our city/region. In 2024 we are planning to realize The New Food Economy zine that outlines what our food policy ideas look like in practice and we need resources to help us spread this message to influence change.

Camp 1 Rootz is an organizing collective based in the deep south who organize in the overwhelmingly black neighborhoods where we live to develop sustainable communities. We sponsor  an annual sustainability camp in Port Gibson, Ms to introduce students ages 7-17 to sustainable development with a focus on food, housing, water, energy, art and culture, security and governance. We encourage our students, parents and staff to take what they learn back home to their neighborhoods and initiate sustainability projects there.Along with our annual camp, we have two Organizing Projects, one in the Pattison, MS neighborhood and the other in the West Jackson neighborhood up from the Bottom. We are seeking funding for our West Jackson Organizing Project. That project is being led by our West Jackson Organizing Collective, who live in the neighborhood. The project currently focuses on door-knocking, sustainable housing acquisition and development, food sustainability, energy and water independence, herbal medicine and healing practices, creating an internal currency, and transformative justice work centered around gender-based violence.

Together We Thrive: Parenting for a Liberated Future 2.0 is a growing innovative project aimed at empowering parents to raise their children in a way that centers the solidarity economy, liberation, and equity. The project focuses on providing resources, peer support, and education to help parents create an environment that cultivates critical thinking, empathy, and social awareness in their children. Through workshops, online resources, and community events, the project seeks to continue to create and maintain a network of like-minded parents committed to nurturing a future generation grounded in solidarity economy principles and a community empowered to create lasting change in the world.

Collective Diaspora’s global Black solidarity economy newsletter is a monthly electronic newsletter that covers the latest news, events, and resources related to the solidarity economy across the African diaspora. Launched in the Spring of 2023 as an occasional quarterly newsletter, we have recently increased the publication frequency to monthly. Each issue covers:

• a profile of a key event that’s taken place; 
• calls for support from Black cooperatives and Black-led co-op support organizations;
• the latest activities from Collective Diaspora and its members;
• the latest news articles/essays/press covering any aspect of the Black solidarity economy;
• the latest podcasts & videos, books, journal articles, reports and more;
• a spotlight on art representing the Black solidarity economy (visual art, music, dance, theater and film);
• job postings; and
• upcoming events 

Cooperation Crenshaw is working in coalition with community organizations in South Los Angeles to develop a business services hub and development group to create and support a network of worker cooperatives.  

Cooperation New Orleans uses cooperatives as a tool to organize and build the governance and leadership capacities of poor and working class communities of color to build and shift power in our lives and in the economy. The economy is the basis of power in our society, and we are building democracy into this area that so deeply impacts our daily lives. For us, building power includes community self-sufficiency; ownership of labor, land and property; access to resources; and shifting power to the commons. 

The United States, Louisiana and the city of New Orleans have deep structural inequities designed from an extractive and exploitative plantation economy to keep workers poor and disenfranchised. Our long-term goal is to build a mass movement for a cooperative New Orleans, led by a base of Black working-class cooperators, engaged in building community-based alternative institutions alongside advocacy and policy change. 

Cooperation New Orleans is developing as an anchor organization in the cooperative ecosystem and Black-led solidarity economy movement in our city. 

Cooperation Racine is an alternative worker-cooperative anchored in West Englewood, founded by Black and Brown artists and makers. Our cooperative creative hub will feature a community gallery, incubator kitchen, darkroom, multimedia studios, and spaces for teaching workshops and hosting events. The building will also house live-work apartments and a retail space highlighting independently-owned BIPOC brands. We make creative endeavors more accessible to the community of Englewood and beyond, by providing equitably-priced live/work spaces and tiered memberships for facility use, in addition to workshops in woodworking, photography, writing and visual art that are accessible to the community. 

Not only does our building at 71st & Racine offer creative facilities, it also represents a third space for Englewood – the physical embodiment of creativity and joy for the local community, and a pivotal opportunity for establishing a sustainable circular creative economy in Chicago.

We believe that anchoring the arts ecosystem in the solidarity economy through cooperative economics is one of many ways to rewrite a history of redlining, divestment, and violence that has left communities of color devoid of opportunity and prosperity, which is why Cooperation Racine is focused on equitable economic development. 

The cooperative model is a form of democracy that truly represents the interests of black and brown communities. It presents an opportunity to mitigate workplace harm and empower members with a voice in their work and creative experiences. 

Our work within the cooperative ecosystem encourages active participation, learning, and development in the arts. Members have the opportunity to engage in creative consulting, art creation, display their work in galleries, and sell their creations in retail spaces. It serves as a platform for using art as a catalyst for broader development, including potential housing solutions for artists and fostering both local and international solidarity.

Finally, Cooperation Racine is engaged in cultural organizing, combining the arts, culture, events, and community organizing to foster social change while strengthening community bonds. Co-op members can use artistic expression to mobilize around shared values and causes—for example, organizing to revitalize Englewood to become a “green corridor” in the city of Chicago. 

“While not every theory leads to a successful revolution, there is no successful revolution without a revolutionary theory.” – Amilcar Cabral, The Weapon of Theory

The Esther Cooper-Jackson Book Study (ECJBS) is a dynamic political education hub, a vital nexus for left-leaning political organizations, progressive social movements, and the vibrant tapestry of the Black working class and individuals of color. Built upon cooperative principles and collective ownership our unwavering commitment to critical analysis forms the backbone of this hub, recognizing that the strength of movements lies in the profound wellsprings of historical knowledge, robust theory, and meticulous analysis.

Born from impassioned dialogues among community organizers, writers, and educators in 2021, ECJBS responds to the evolving contours of left movements and the future trajectory of U.S. movement-building. Acknowledging the scarcity of time, space, and tools for organizers to dissect the intricate layers of political, economic, and social trends, our hub bridges these gaps, facilitating the formulation of clear and impactful political strategies for systemic change.

ECJBS stands as a beacon, seamlessly weaving together education, analysis, theory, dialogue, and organizing. This integrated approach finds expression in a diverse array of forums, including international exchanges, study groups, presentations, film series, and dialogues. As a political education hub, ECJBS has already hosted nearly 50 events, both independently and collaboratively that will shape the trajectory of future discourse.

The core commitment of ECJBS focuses on uniting the left through non-sectarian, democratic, and critically analyzed approaches to organizing for local, regional, and global politics. Serving as an educational laboratory and collective organizing playground, we emphasize the transformative power of theory and ideas as indispensable tools for movement building. Our collective thought is enriched by the profound legacy of revolutionary thinkers and organizers, like Esther, who have paved the way for our shared journey.

Endstate ATL is an abolitionist, Black Queer Feminist organizing body that is deeply vested in dismantling the dependency of Black people on the State. Our assertion, “Can’t Wait For The State”, has underscored our mutual aid interventions and our work to politicize and radicalize Black queer people in Atlanta. After years of participation in coalition and collaborating with other cooperative and mutual aid organizations, ESA started tending to the broader movement or network-building work as an effort to de-silo our work, and better coordinate and strategize to meet the needs of marginalized Black Atlantans. 

Our work spans cultural and economic interventions through mutual aid, political education, and solidarity economy network-building.  

An example of our network building is our Black Atlanta Solidarity Economy or BASE annual gathering. We bring together people from all over Atlanta and beyond to imagine the future of solidarity economies in our region. This most recent year, we had upwards of 75 people attend workshops and a vendor sale in partnership with several Atlanta-based organizations including Sol Underground and Blaqueer Art Market (BAM). We also provided free Black radical books and holistic care items to local organizers through our partnership with Herbal Society. This project is aimed at strategizing toward alternative economies that are rooted in the survival of Black, queer, and disabled folks and leading by example with what it means to prioritize people in our cultural and financial endeavors.

This project is part of our movement toward housing justice in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. Our mission is to prevent loss of neighbors to displacement and to build support for low-income affordable housing. This funding would support Working Groups within our Housing Committee as well as the distribution of our Housing Justice Values document.

Working Groups formed this past Summer in three areas- 1) Community Outreach via tabling and door-knocking, 2) Mutual Aid to support housing needs in the form of repair, technical assistance, financial assistance, and more, 3) Organizer’s Guide to help mobilize neighbors to come out when pressing development issues are at stake. We are also pursuing creation of a Community Land Trust. < That intention is where our organization began in 2017, and we have since been building resources and relationships, and a foundation for this bigger undertaking.

Our Housing Justice Values document is currently being worked on by a local graphic designer and is approximately 10 pages reflecting the values that guide our approach to housing organizing. It includes statements such as “Every neighbor is valuable” or “We are not waiting to be revitalized. We are already vital” and “We are becoming the Beloved Community that we have dreamt of, and have the resources to build and sustain.” We look forward to releasing it at our annual Dr. King Day gathering in January 2025 and then spreading it throughout the neighborhood, while we build support for our solidarity-minded approach to housing justice organizing.

We are a Black femme-led consulting group dedicated to providing administrative, financial, cultural, and developmental support to grassroots organizations. Our mission is to empower under-resourced community projects within our movement’s ecosystem, leveraging our diverse skills and expertise to revitalize organizations and their leaders, enabling them to better serve their communities and foster mental, social, and economic well-being.

Our approach is mission-driven and values-based, prioritizing cooperation over competition to build a solidarity economy rooted in reciprocal relationships rather than mere transactions. We emphasize governance that prioritizes quality of life over organizational profit, ensuring that people’s well-being is at the heart of every decision.

We start by assessing the needs of the organization or individual, building relationships and rapport that often begin with general volunteering to establish trust. From this foundation, we aim to empower ongoing efforts and intentionally introduce alternative ways of being and operating. Our commitment includes offering resources and guidance at no cost, supporting sustainable growth aligned with cooperative principles.

Our collective brings a diverse range of skills, including but not limited to media management, organizing, budgeting, business administration, education, gardening/farming, trauma counseling, cooperative development, somatic healing, and leadership development. As we grow, we hope to create this work as our full-time commitment, exploring various means of generating capital to sustain ourselves and our mission. Additionally, we offer internalized mental health support, ensuring that organizations and leaders receive the care they need to thrive while serving their communities.

Below is a list of the projects we currently support:

• HOLLA 
• Youthfest  
• Tenants Association / Brooklyn Eviction Defense
• Anhksgiving 
• Weekly Community Clean Ups
• Educational Speaker Series
• Curbfest
• Consulting Business, for cultural 
• Fairy Juice Bar (vegan) 
• Beyond Bussin’ (vegan)
• Peoples Senate Committee 
• Vocalize your heart- Therapy Group 
• Community Gardens – Black Joy Farm, Seeding Squares, Tehiti Ma’at Garden 
• Black Women’s Blueprint
• Maroon Camp Retreats

Herb and Temple is seeking funding for general operating expenses to support our healing justice, cooperative economics and spiritual restoration programming. We curate intergenerational programs, gatherings, classes, tools, and workshops that bridge holistic wellness with efforts to build socio-political efficacy. We normalize wellness and raise the collective consciousness among Black and Brown people utilizing a framework curated to focus emotional and mental health, bodily and energetic wellness, spiritual vitality, environmental wellness,  community wholeness, and cooperative care economies. 

iLOGIC @ Solomon’s Garden Land Stewardship Cooperative is a group-owned and operated Land Stewardship training facility and retreat space located in Eutaw, Alabama.  Our land-based training program offers new and aspiring Black land stewards the opportunity to learn holistic ways of engaging with the land and community through community education and political context.  

Our space is a 5-acre land base that will serve as the economic base for graduates of our Homestead Incubation Program who purchase parcels of land that we own here in the county.  Members of the cooperative will run all aspects of the business, which offers:

1. Land stewardship training programs, classes, and workshops onsite and online
2. A tool library to encourage the growth of small business owners who are working to build their capacity
3. Unique lodging options including:
   1. Cabins
   2. Domes
   3. Glamping tents
   4. RV hook-ups
4. Event space
5. Commercial kitchen for local land stewards to create value-added products as well as use for events and programs
6. Cold storage for local farmers who don’t have the infrastructure
7. Festival space
8. A fully functional market garden & sustainably harvested wild herbs
9. Free-range chickens and egg production
10. Equine boarding facility – including barn & pasture

Inclusive Louisiana is an environmental justice organization based in St. James Parish –commonly known as Cancer Alley– to support our ongoing awareness campaign, programming, and strengthen the infrastructure to grow local power.

The Responsive Resistance Training Program is part of a Community Defense Cooperative, of Liberation Loaded, aiming to train a core membership of at least 100 black people in building practices of revolutionary discipline, consciousness-raising through political education, study, and physical training. 

Our vision is to build a deep local political foundation by developing a community defense cooperative, with an international solidarity strategy of connecting with other peoples struggles that informs our organizing activities. 

We believe that having a politic around community defense, preparation, and scenario planning, will equip our communities us to mitigate potential crises and political upheaval. 

By building a solid core of trained individuals in areas such as political education, defensive strategy, medical training and secure communications, we can develop preventative controls in place for unforeseeable, but anticipated variables that might otherwise devastate our movements.

The Maternal Health Equity Collaborative (MHEC) comprises five birth and parenting organizations that collectively serve Central Texas. Our Mission is to make birth safer for Black and Brown families by building community and using our collective power to create lasting change rooted in birth justice and equity. Our vision is for Black and Brown communities to enter a new world where birth is a safe, healthy, and joyful experience for all. Our guiding pillars are birth worker sustainability, thriving communities, power building and organizing, and holistic care. We take a two-pronged approach to fulfilling these pillars by supporting each organization in caring for their staff and through collective programming that includes a Childcare Program and biannual Community Baby Shower. 

The MHEC GAP Fund program fills in the gaps of care left by systemic inequities of capitalism that disproportionately impact Black families and communities of color. This program was initially designed to distribute funds to our member organizations to provide paid family medical leave to staff during the late pregnancy and postpartum period. It has since evolved to provide emergency funds for rental assistance, perinatal care, and natural disaster relief, directly into the hands of our members. We are actively working to expand capacity to distribute GAP Funds, as well as expand eligibility beyond our current MHEC Members, to include more folks of our larger community that are impacted by financial insecurity to include organizational staff, contractors, volunteers, birth workers, childcare specialists and the families that we serve. 

Mosaic is shifting its membership structure because we need to make clear that we are looking to build a committed group of Black trans men and trans masculine folks to take on leadership to transform our living conditions. What we mean by that, is we are looking for members who have the desire and commitment to build healing justice organizing discipline through political education, harm reduction/community health, and land stewardship. This level of work requires a deep, long-term investment in building and maintaining trusting relationships to engage in transformative work. We are preparing our minds, bodies, and spirits for struggle that will take place as we work to change conditions for our communities and futures.

Below are the projects that will be undertaken in 2025 with cadre:

• Launching a Fellowship for cadre to develop their leadership under a few different areas of expertise that the core team holds: political education, harm reduction/community health, and land stewardship/community defense
• We’ll be continuing our CSA farming program, but as we welcomed new members this year, we expect to either expand this program to meet their material needs and/or be stipending cadre to hold down biweekly distribution across counties in MD, and the transportation required to deliver produce
• Mosaic also has begun letter writing to our incarcerated members, and are looking to get on the visitation list for our people, as you know, prisons are situated far from cities that we live. Part of this work also is educating our members and community about HB453, and how it has harmed our currently and previously incarcerated members, and working to advocate for its passage as well as the SB 1165: HIV Decrim Bill that did not pass in 2024. 
• Partnering with a prescribing physician to offer a bridge program for members and Black trans folks on T who would otherwise not have access to hormones or lab work
• Many of our members are also looking to access gender-affirming surgeries, and we have an internal support system for pre/post-op, but would like to expand this to offering scholarships, and transportation, meals, etc. to the members supporting each other, as well as the potential families supporting their loved one through their recovery. 

The Mobile Artist Incubator is an extension of our commitment to pouring back into Black arts and education while documenting and preserving our history of visionary resistance. Through this incubator, we hope to remove some of the boundaries that prevent many Black artists’ from opportunities to explore the world. The Mobile Artist Incubator is a space for creatives to connect literature to selected places and to challenge the pervasive narratives that have impacted marginalized communities in those places. We will leverage poetic, visual and literary devices to author new, speculative and true narratives. The series is a continuation of the longstanding Poetry as Visionary Resistance series started by our Founding Executive Director, Tawana Petty aka Honeycomb. She began this series years ago for community members, creatives, students, organizers and educators interested in learning how to interrogative and reshape dominant negative narratives about predominantly Black city Detroit. The series serves as much as a political education series as it does as a series to sharpen creative practice and boost public participation in issues that affect the Black community.

The PACA Study Circles program is a three-month initiative inspired by Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard. In this seminal work, Dr. Nembhard highlights numerous historic examples of Black cooperative endeavors, enterprises, and movements. These efforts often arose from groups of committed individuals who gathered for self-study and knowledge exchange to address the social, system, economic, and community barriers they faced.

Our Study Circles program centers on Black movement and history, encouraging the exercise of self-determination rather than reliance on oppressive systems, colonial conditioning, and profit-centered societies that contribute to injustices, trauma, and conflict within Black communities. We create and facilitate workshops, curriculum, resources, and support to promote cooperative ideas and practices. We educate participants on the struggle for black liberation and the role of cooperation, mutual aid, and collectivism through the movement.

The study circles program is designed to be a space where both new cooperators (ex. Activist groups, community members, collectives of healing practitioners, etc) and individuals from established traditional organizations (ex. Storefronts, small business owners, community spaces, nonprofits) seeking to implement cooperative governance convene, learn, and expand their social and political awareness while exploring alternative ways of operating. Our goal is to expose participants and our larger community to the diverse expressions and practices of cooperatives and the Philadelphia solidarity economy that we at PACA are dedicated to cultivating. Upon completing the program, groups receive priority access to our Technical Assistance programming to continue their cooperative journey. 

The program covers a variety of subjects, including (but not limited to) the history of Study Circles and Black cooperatives, Cooperative 101 and 102, democratic decision-making strategies, participatory budgeting, and trauma-informed cooperation. Additionally, we host two annual events:

1. The Land Stewardship Panel: This event gathers a diverse group of participants to share experiences and knowledge related to land stewardship and its many forms, including Community Land Trusts, Business Corridor Trusts, community-based farms, and personal land ownership.
2. The Study Circles Field Trip: Participants, along with PACA’s network of members, program participants, board, and staff, are invited to tour Urban Creators, a PACA member and Philadelphia-based urban farm nonprofit organization that operates cooperatively.

Sankofa Village Arkansas is a forming intentional community, community land trust, and future cooperative incubator. Our mission is to transform multigenerational community wellness through land stewardship & education. We center Black healing, liberation & regeneration in our work toward housing affordability, wealth-building, and climate resiliency. 

The Sankofa Village Arkansas Community Collaborative is our decision-making body and the core place to shape the culture, practices, and priorities for Sankofa Village Arkansas. Since the formation of the Community Collaborative (CC) in July 2021, we have been able to provide modest stipends ($100 per month) to CC members to honor their time and wisdom. Currently, 5/7 of our CC members accept stipends. CC members must identify as Black and have roots in the state of Arkansas. Four of us live in-state, while three of us live out-of-state. 

As of June 2024, we have six key project pods that CC members serve as Connectors to. They include: (1) Grant & Finance, (2) Political Engagement, (3) Programming & Events, (4) Healing & Memory Work, (5) Sustainable Stewardship, and (6) Marketing & Communications. The CC meets monthly, and may meet with project pod Co-Connectors another 1-4 times a month. As we continue to recruit CC members, advisors, and project pod volunteers, we hope to gather more enthusiasts and experts to grow and deepen these areas of focus.

JENESYS is a 3-year islandwide project to regenerate Jamaica’s soil health, in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture. Solidarity Yaad, gaining organic status in 2023, was chosen as one of seven demonstration sites to support climate resilience and food sovereignty highlighting 11 regenerative agricultural strategies.

Through monthly workshops, we teach regenerative and ancestral farming techniques to BIPOC women, queer leaders, and gardeners, empowering them to become climate-adaptive advocates. We’re reviving Taino, Maroon, and African farming traditions and decolonizing community farming for a more collective future.

Our goals:

• Build a thriving organic marketplace where BIPOC, LBQT individuals, and women can showcase their products and gain economic independence.
• Sustainably grow high-value indigenous crops like coconut, turmeric, ginger, cacao, bananas, and short crop vegetables and fruits in a way that promotes soil fertility and reduce the impact of chemically toxic monocropping agriculture.
• Combat food deserts caused by import reliance, ensuring everyone has access to nutritious food.
• Provide food to those unable to reach us, while educating our community on the benefits of regenerative methods for long-term food security and climate resilience.

With this project, Southern Sector Rising (“SSR”) is embarking on a groundbreaking journey to establish a Community Land Trust (CLT) and Cooperative Economic System in Sandbranch, one of Texas’s last remaining Freedmen’s Towns. Sandbranch, located outside the city limits of southern Dallas, has been denied the most basic human rights for decades – residents have no reliable access to clean water, sanitation, nor stable land ownership. With your support, we will take direct action to change that with the ultimate goal to create a sustainable, community-owned future where Sandbranch residents can thrive.

But we’re not stopping at land rights. We are expanding the trust to acquire more land and create community-owned assets that will empower Sandbranch and neighboring areas to build long-term wealth and self-sufficiency. By adding additional land for community assets, such as shared public spaces, affordable housing, and cooperatively owned businesses, we are creating a holistic economic ecosystem that allows Black communities to take control of their financial destinies.

Stellar Rooting is a capital campaign to purchase and renovate our community living center in Amherst, VA. We have been leasing 69+ acres of land from the School of Living Community Land Trust and have been given the incredible opportunity to purchase the property that resides on it. The vision is to rent out the space more frequently, to serve five times as many visitors per season in a warm and inviting facility. The space will also provide a safe place for queer folks of the global majority to commune, conspire, and camp; while providing a hub for innovating services, programs, and opportunities designed to cultivate and care for the land and mission. The total cost to make this vision a reality is projected to be about $75,000 ($30,000 for the purchase of the home, and $45,000 for renovations, landscaping, and legal services). 

SMASH is a Black-led Community Land Trust nonprofit organization focused on providing safe, healthy, sustainable and affordable housing to the most underserved Black communities in Miami-Dade County and building people power by advancing healing and restorative justice, educating community members, developing strong community leaders, advocating for policy change, organizing our community, fighting for racial, gender, housing and climate justice and creating strong alliances with community members and organizations sharing our vision of a Miami free of slumlords, racism, discrimination, displacement, gentrification, homelessness and unfair housing. Fostering solidarity and cooperation, and empowering our most vulnerable Black populations, consisting mainly of women and LGBTQ+ youth affected by housing insecurity, systemic racism, social inequality, and many other forms of injustice.

Our project promotes the development of solidarity economy initiatives in a just and sustainable environment with residents living in affordable housing cooperatives and land trusts, working at worker-owned cooperative businesses, engaging in sustainable and regenerative consumption, nurturing their self-sufficiency and enabling them with the required knowledge and skills to build their houses, preserve their land, develop leadership roles, enable their collective decision-making about the future of their Community Land Trust (CLT) and become strong community leaders and organizers fostering a culture of solidarity and respect.

We also provide our community members with the legal understanding, organizational resources, and necessary support to fight for land restoration, racial and gender justice, housing, health, economic and climate rights, and contributing to the dismantling of the structural racism and racial capitalism that has historically affected our Black communities for generations.

Studio Lalala is a QTBIPOC member-owned cooperative of filmmakers, providing affordable studio space, hands-on popular education, and high-quality low-budget documentation for our community of queer and trans BIPOC artists. We believe in a world where the process of filmmaking and its barriers can be reimagined, and where a network of queer and trans BIPOC artists can share resources to achieve a vision of economic autonomy and artistic bliss.

The Odu Project’s Assembly is designed to create a platform for collective decision-making, knowledge-sharing, and community governance around food justice and sustainable agriculture. A key component of this initiative is the establishment of garden clubs as base-building tools, which provide practical spaces for community engagement, skill development, and sustainable food production. These garden clubs not only serve as hubs for reconnecting with ancestral agricultural practices but also create networks of participants who are invested in the project’s goals. Regular assemblies within these clubs will allow members, farmers, and activists to collectively discuss and shape the project’s direction, ensuring that decisions are made by those directly impacted by food insecurity and environmental challenges. Through participatory governance, skill-building workshops, and collaborative problem-solving, the Odu Project strengthens its base while empowering the community to drive sustainable change from the ground up.

The Tammy Lynn Foundation requests $25,000 to support a barter network designed specifically for Black parents and guardians of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in New York. The network will provide a vital means for these families to access much-needed resources, including recreational, nutritional, health, economic, hygienic, and educational support. Managed and led by the families themselves, the network leverages a solidarity economy model, built on principles of cooperation, mutual aid, and collective responsibility. As part of the larger movement supported by the Tammy Lynn Foundation, this initiative aims to empower Black families by fostering community resilience and addressing systemic disparities in care and support for people with IDD.

We are a newly-developing educational institution serving the Black Liberation Movement, specifically building the power of Black workers, the majority of our people, for Self-Determination at the workplace and in the community. We understand and lift up the especially important role the U.S. South plays in the history of Black people, formerly enslaved in the US, the US and the Global South. 

The uniqueness of The Communiversity is that we closely link to the organiziing strategies and methods used by Black Workers For Justice (BWFJ) and United Electrical Workers Union (Local 150, NC Public Service Workers Union – UE150) emphasizing rank & file democracy, “social justice unionism” and the understanding of the fundamental grounding of the Black liberation and labor movements in the centrality of the Black Working Class in struggling for workers power and self-determination.

The Radical Organizing School, at VOLAR, is an intergenerational community organizing and social movement school based in East Baltimore. 

We aim to develop and train community leaders in:

• Holistic and transformative community organizing skills and strategies,
• Black led-community development, transformative financial and social history literacy, community investment, and more  (community land trust, community trust fund, intentional cooperative housing community)
• Diverse healing and mindfulness modalities as essential tools toward our liberation, 
• Community-based research 
• Radical social movement theory
• Cultural organizing tactics and strategies
• Art and design

We continue to work on establishing a cooperative solidarity network as a neighborhood, municipal, and regional strategy for generating community wealth and establishing fully participatory democratic practices. Building a general framework for a scalable cooperative network that provides structured, centralized, and comprehensive programming for community members. With a goal to support the local economy, preserve the history and culture of the community, as well as maintain community stability and cohesion. 

Executed through a model of economic reconstruction and community transformation, rooted in the goals of:

1. Preserving local community economies by blocking financial extraction and consolidation
2. Extending public ownership in the public interest
3. Grounding economic reconstruction in a foundation of community wealth
4. Establishing a solidarity economy educational track for community engagement
5. Developing a community of practice that socializes community members in the activities and processes of a fully participatory democratic environment

We continue to lay the groundwork to implement a comprehensive strategy to use local economic assets to revitalize the local economy. Catalyzing locally-driven economic revitalization and transforming patterns of ownership towards democratically owned and controlled assets cultivated through an asset based community development model. Leveraging public and cooperative assets and institutions along with existing anchor institutional stakeholders to build community wealth.

Womxnist Liberation Cooperative (WLC) is a Black-owned nationwide, multi-stakeholder co-op providing a multitude of services while building a sustainable infrastructure for our members that encourages autonomy, agency and access to resources needed to support themselves and their families. 

We envision a world where Black folx of the diaspora have thriving wages, all the resources that we need, and the ability to live our desired lifestyle without compromising our values and politics. 

We see a world where black folx livelihoods flourish in the long term.

We hope to live in a world without oppression, a society that is restorative, regenerative, and abundant.

Anchored in an anti-imperialist Black feminist perspective, Implacable Books was created early 2024 to support the cause of liberation by collecting, organizing, analyzing, and propagating information and books pertaining to our interconnected struggles. 

Existing as a worker owned and managed bookstore, library/reading room, and community space, Implacable Books supports the intellectual and social development of individuals and groups that contribute to and want to learn from the rich experiences of liberation struggles worldwide, especially those pertaining to captive nations within US borders and women.

Implacable Books brings together people of all ages and abilities who are moved by the stories, dreams, and analyses of our revolutionary ancestors and contemporaries and who feel genuinely compelled to carry on their fights into their own lives and communities.

We ask and answer difficult questions and hold challenging conversations about what is happening in the world and what we are going to do about it. We bring our collective perspectives, talents, procilvities, and sensibilities to bear on the issues facing this generation. 

Workers Revolutionary Collective (WRC) is a general circle of civil rights, social action, and advocacy collectives uplifting the needs of – and organizing working class people. Grounded in the community, we are standing in solidarity and coordinating with working class people to abolish our shared struggles – ending our collective exploitation. To effectively do this we engage in non-violent struggle to empower working class organizers, produce creative narratives, offer holistic popular education, and secure community wellness needs. We build community-based forms of support free from domination and oppression, centering working class needs and understandings.

Our Food Justice Expansion (FJE) program functions as one of our community-based forms of support – serving over 700 households. Consisting of four components, the FJE relies on an intricate network of community members, organizations, and food producers and suppliers to meet collective food needs. It consists of four components:

• Community Food Share – Food distribution system hosted on Mondays and Thursdays with Food Not Bombs – Philly (FNB-Philly), the LAVA space, and the Sunrise Movement – Philly (SM-Philly). Using the LAVA space our community is invited to take and contribute groceries based on their needs. WRC members pick-up from local food sources before 3PM. Until 5 PM, all community members are provided access to healthy food and supportive community leadership. We pack grocery bags and boxes for families unable to access food, with excess supplying the Ronnie Vega Community Fridge. Preliminary data shows we are distributing up to 1200 lbs. of food per week.
• Community Meals – Mealshare event hosted on Wednesdays in partnership with Double Trellis and the LAVA space. We distribute chef made, healthy meals to any hungry people in food insecure locations across West and South Philly. Provided by Double Trellis, hot and cold meals are distributed to hungry people in various locations (i.e. houseless encampments, public spaces, and a senior center) and community fridges throughout Philadelphia (i.e. primarily in the West and South). Double Trellis reports that 175 meals are distributed by WRC members per week.
• Thursday Fridge Fill – Providing meals to community fridges in our West and Northwest Philadelphia fridge network (i.e. Ronnie Vega (19104), East Falls(19129), Germantown – High St. (19144), and Mt. Airy (19150).) Using our people’s fleet or members’ personal vehicles, we pick up and transport produce from various community partners. We then transport donated produce to community fridges, disabled community members, and a Tacony-based retirement community. Photos of filled community fridges are posted on Instagram and all excess is delivered to LAVA’s Thursday Food Share. WRC members fill up community fridges with 570 – 800 lbs. food per week.
• Community Grocery Box Delivery – Monthly sustainability initiative providing prepared boxes for members of our city-wide mutual support network. Members shop for groceries using a community shopping list with redistributed funds and member food stamps. We then prepare personalized boxes based on the needs of specific households. Afterwards, we deliver the prepared boxes from the LAVA space to food insecure households. Additionally we offer a donation-based grocery-box subscription service to donors contributing to our program’s sustainability.