What is the program COOPERATIVISE!
Do you have an entrepreneurial idea and want to know how to make it a reality?
The advice and support resources already available in the town must be taken into account. What is more, it is important to remember that, often, young people over the age of 18 have not yet finished their studies, do not know what area of work they want to/can go into, are not interested in entrepreneurship or have never considered it, or do not know what the SSE is and what opportunities it can offer. To respond to this reality and the need of NEET’s (Not Employ, Education or Training), we have designed a programme that aims to stimulate their interest in social entrepreneurship called COOPERATIVISE!
It is a program to support the creation of cooperatives for young people, offering them counseling and advice services. This advice also aims to work on transversal skills, to promote the individual and collective commitment and responsibility of young peolpe with the social, economic and digital challenges of the city of Mataró.
The pedagogical and intervention model of this program is mainly based on putting young people at the heart of the project and promoting their autonomy, giving them tools to self-organize and self-manage their work, encouraging their commitment and responsibility, also facilitating the acquisition of new learning and new personal skills (management, social, personal and work) based on their own abilities and cooperative learning.
COOPERATIVISE!
- Coopératives Jeunesse de Services (CJS) del Québec: a project focusing on experiential, meaningful, cooperative learning, in which children and young people aged 12 to 18 learn about and experience starting up a worker cooperative during the summer period. During this time, the young participants design, create and manage a (fictional) cooperative, from which they offer services, mainly to individuals, like painting, gardening, maintenance, and are paid for them
- The CuEmE programme (https://www.diba.cat/web/cueme/projecte-educatiu) led by Barcelona Provincial Council, which is carried out in primary schools to encourage entrepreneurship among young students. Mataró City Council has been taking part with 4 schools for 3 years now.
The main objective of the program is to support the creation of cooperatives for young people, to offer assistance and counseling services and to show the advantages of a social economy project. Young people will experience first-hand the process of creating and managing a fictitious cooperative (cooperative simulation), accompanied by professionals with experience in the social economy. We want young people to know the importance of thinking about new business projects that are much more social, cooperative, digital and sustainable.
Based on the main objective of the program, the following secondary objectives are designed:
- Work on the transversal skills of young people, on a personal and professional level;
- Encourage the commitment and individual and collective responsibility of young participants to the social, economic, digital and environmental needs of their city;
- Offer a response from the social economy to the needs of the city through business projects and self-employment.
- Contextual dimension: state of the Social and Solidarity Economy in the territory, constitution of cooperatives, statutes, human resources,...
- Relational dimension: work group, internal organization ...
- Formal dimension: The rules, the statutes, the internal regulations, the evaluation tools that must manage the cooperative.
- Economic and commercial dimension: CANVAS Model, market study and commercial support sessions (depending on the service to which the cooperative has decided to dedicate).
- Communicative dimension: the trainings are combined with visits to cooperative and community projects and environments and with the development of their cooperative.

- Change the economic paradigm and bet on the social, sustainable, green and digital economy. A more social economy is also more resilient and copes better with crisis situations
- Reduce youth unemployment by encouraging social entrepreneurship. We need to show young people that from their own abilities they can be able to raise innovative and social projects that put people at the center and have a positive impact on their environment.