The Big Carrot won Outstanding Retailer at the 2012 Ontario Organic Awards. The Big Carrot is the first retailer in Ontario to receive Canadian Organic Standards certification, and is one of the founding members of the NON-GMO Project. The Big Carrot has high in-house standards, and is a leader in consumer education, as evidenced through their free private nutritional store tours and weekly seminars as well as sponsorship of countless education/outreach events and programs that promote organics.

From one of the folks making the nomination: "The Big Carrot - For their dedication in spreading the word about organics and for not compromising on their core values. They continue to stay true to their mission and vision and continue to serve their local community. Thanks to everyone at The Big Carrot for everything that they do!" Julie Daniluk, an in-store nutritionist at the Big Carrot, won the Education Award. Congrats!

The purpose of the share offering is to help raise capital needed to complete the development of Neechi Commons Community Business Complex. The Investment Shares will be sold to the general public, marking the first time that any co-operative in Manitoba has offered shares to non-members as well as to members. Residents of Manitoba will be eligible for the Province's 30% Community Enterprise Development Tax Credit on share purchases of up to $30,000. Neechi Commons will feature a neighbourhood supermarket, a fruit and vegetable courtyard and farmers' market, cafeteria restaurant, specialty boutiques, a bakery and an Aboriginal arts centre. Over 50 new jobs will be created, drawing heavily on local area residents. The complex, a make-over and expansion of the old California Fruit Market building, includes geo-thermal heating and cooling and has been awarded Green Globes certification for its high environmental standards. A press conference will be held on March 8th at 9:30 am at the existing store on 325 Dufferin Avenue in Winnipeg. For further information, call Louise Champagne at (204) 981-0085.

General manager Nigel Fearon said the name change was prompted due to constant confusion that their business was a bottle depot and a mouthful of words as well. Their wholesaler, staff and customers feel that Old Town Glassworks (OTG)  is a name that accurately reflects what they do and so far they have had excellent feedback and business. Their members and staff gathered together with a design agency to brainstorm a new name. OTG was decided in that initial meeting and the whole group was pretty well decided by the end of that gathering. They sat with it for awhile and the name continued to grow on them. The name also gives a sense of place (Old Town) with a historic image as well as a cottage feel. Lastly, it says what they do artwork-wise and makes it sound intriguing (Glassworks).

CWCF has viewed the UN International Year of Co-operatives as a historic and unique opportunity to promote the co-op model, and especially the worker co-op model which is badly needed in this time when the mainstream economy is so badly failing working people. CWCF has marked the International Year of Co-operatives in the following ways: 1) We hosted our dual, international Conferences in Quebec City in October 2011 on "Business Successions and Worker Co operatives". 2) We along with all of the other worker co-op federations in Canada and the US have proclaimed the Quebec Declaration on Public Policy for worker co-operatives. 3)  We took the lead in one region of Canada, Alberta, to spear-head a crowd-sourcing initiative in the broader co-op sector, called the "Alberta Co-op Cafe." More

Par Alain Bridault - (translation) Le premier mandat du conseil d'administration d'une coopérative de travail est d'administrer et de contrôler la gestion de l'entreprise de manière à satisfaire au mieux les intérêts des membres travailleurs qui en sont collectivement propriétaires. En fait le conseil d'administration d'une coopérative de travail a le même type de mandat que celui d'une entreprise privée à capital actions, c'est-à-dire de faire en sorte que l'entreprise serve au mieux les intérêts de ses propriétaires.Mais, alors que dans une entreprise privée, cela signifie faire en sorte que l'entreprise génère le plus de profits possibles afin de payer aux actionnaires propriétaires des dividendes par action les plus élevés possibles, il en est tout autrement dans une coopérative de travailleurs. Plus

On February 9, 2012, CWCF executive director, Hazel Corcoran, was interviewed (at the 21m42s mark) on the Road Less Travelled radio show (102.7 FM in Thunder Bay). The theme of the show was income inequality, based on a CCPA fact sheet titled The 99% vs. The 1%. In 2007, the average Canadian had an income of $38,200, while the richest 0.01% had an average income of $3.8 million. The income growth share for the richest 1% increased 32% in Canada from 1997 to 2007, while in the 1950s and 1960s it was 8%. "If the entire economy was organized on  worker co-op lines, there would be no extremely poor or rich people." More

Every year, brands spend hundreds of billions of dollars on advertising, including tens of billions on both internet and television advertising. It can be difficult for worker co-operatives to compete in this environment. Equal Exchange, an organic and Fairtrade worker co-operative in the United States, hired CrewTide, who help brands tell their stories and reach new audiences for a fraction of the cost. CrewTide helped create Connection Lost: A Love Story, a Valentine's Day thriller-romance about danger, love, and chocolate. Greg and Ophelia barricade themselves in against the oncoming apocalypse and find that turning everything off can lead to good things. Episode 1 alone had over 51,000 views on YouTube. Check it out!

By Dru Oja Jay (Media Co-op) - SolidarityNYC is a New York City-based group which works to create links between social movements and the "solidarity economy." The latter consists of co-operatives, small businesses, non-profits and other economic activities which "reinforce values of justice, ecological sustainability, co-operation, and democracy." The group aims to promote the solidarity economy as an alternative to the "competition and hierarchy which characterize corporate capitalism." Much of SolidarityNYC's recent work has centred around Occupy Wall Street, where many of its members have been active. Through their "Occupy Workplace Democracy" event and other activities, SolidarityNYC has worked to "challenge the social justice movement to take up grassroots economic community development" as a way of building solidarity and concrete alternatives to capitalism. More

By Jessica Reader (Shareable.net) - Think you know what big business looks like? Think again. According to Charles Gould, Director-General of the International Cooperative Alliance, co-operatives are poised to be the fastest growing business model by 2020. With Global 300 we wanted to get the message out that the co-operative is a serious business model, that they're scalable - some of them are huge - and employ tens of thousands of people, and they're effective. We felt that we had to feature some of the largest co-operatives in the world to get that message out. And that's the purpose of the Global 300. It shows that really, these 300 co-ops have aggregated revenue of $1.6 trillion, which is huge. It'd be the size of one of the top ten economies in the world. And that's just the 300. More

By Pauline Green (Co-operative News) - There are many immensely competent and inspirational women who work within the co-op movement. The strength and determination of some of the huge, although largely little known, female personalities who drove equal rights for women into the core of co-operative principles almost from the moment that the Rochdale Pioneers codified the first set of principles as we know them today. And those women who, sometimes in the most difficult of circumstances, are still showing those exceptional leadership roles today. From Eliza Brierley, the quite amazing woman mill worker who one day in 1846 lined up with the queue of male mill workers who were waiting to add a few pennies to their co-op savings account to reach the magic £1 at which point they became full members of the Rochdale Pioneers Equitable Co-operative Society. More