Helping Ourselves: Success Stories in Co-Operative Business and Social Enterprise

Editors: Robert Briscoe & Michael Ward, 2005, 230 pages

ISBN: 1-86076-284-0

Publisher: Oak Tree Press

Price:  €20

This book can be purchased on-line from the Oak Tree Press site: Click Here To Go To Oak Tree Press Catalogue Page

Co-operatives, owned and controlled by the people who use their services, represent a radically different way of running the businesses of the world, a strategy that is engaging the active commitment and creativity of more and more people worldwide. It is an approach to meeting our needs that gives ordinary people the chance to get involved in shaping the world they live in. And get involved they do: an estimated 725 million people - a sizeable proportion of the world’s 6 billion population – are members of the co-operatives affiliated to the International Co-operative Alliance.This book explores the co-operative way of doing business across a wide spectrum of activities and needs, ranging from basic needs for food, water, finance, jobs, health-care and transportation, to needs for entertaining leisure activities, and the development of vibrant communities. In each of these areas, we show how ordinary people around the world are finding innovative ways of meeting their needs, with results that are proving more effective than the systems designed by big business and big government.