地球的儿童艺术合作社

Background

地球合作社的孩子成立于2014年9月，当时学生在学校的一项名为“旅程和成功的计划”的计划（简称JAS）接触，他们希望帮助学生建立在那里学校的商业模式。JAS已经帮助学生制定了一项企业家计划和医疗计划，现在想制定一个更直接地与合作社有关的课后计划。经过几次演讲，向学生讲述了合作社和更多会议，学生们决定他们的合作社将是艺术合作社。由于地球高中的孩子是一所传统学校，因此学生认为艺术合作社专注于传统艺术是有意义的。合作社将出售上学的学生的艺术，以帮助将学校绑在合作社中。一个半月后，地球合作社的孩子们开始运作；该合作社向学校学生开放。

Manitoba Cooperative Association (MCA) Support

为了获得Children of the Earth Co-op up and running the artists needed supplies and the members needed business knowledge; Manitoba Co-op Association (MCA) was able to help with both. The goal of MCA was to teach the students about how co-ops work and how they can be used to strengthen and develop communities, the model of student run co-ops was taken from Quebec(a province were student run co-ops are more common) and altered to fit the needs of MCA and Children of the Earth. MCA was able to help expose the artists to the business side of the co-op, they were also able to breakdown costs and help allocate where profits should be spent; from paying the artists to buying more canvas’s and other supplies.

When the Co-op first started and needed financing MCA and the Children of the Earth High school were able to help fund the co-op through a loan. MCA gave the Children of the Earth co-op a small loan of a $1000, after the co-ops first art show were they made a profit of $2500 the co-op was able to repay the loan immediately, pay the artists and buy more supplies becoming financially self-sufficient. MCA still helps support the co-op and its ideas; when the members of the co-op have new ideas to help further the business, MCA will run feasibility studies on the ideas presented by the members and help then figure out the best way to approach or implement said ideas.

Organization Structure

The president of Children of the Earth Co-op was nominated by the members early on. The co-op membership remains exclusive to students but they hope to expand sometime in the future to allow people outside of the school join. One of the biggest challenges for the co-op is that not all students can make it to all of the meetings all of the time; this can be a challenge as one of the basic needs for a co-ops survival is trust and cohesion amongst the members. The co-op finds that the best way to combat this is by getting to know the other members; since both the members and the artists are classmates teamwork can built in school to help strengthen the co-ops cohesion.