Story

Cooperative 3E was born on the strong believe that change is possible – but needs people who are open for critical re-thinking, learning, testing, and pushing forward equitable and sustainable ways of working, living and organizing ourselves as the civil society.

In the beginning we focused on freeing the untapped potential that women, especially migrant women, have for creating a more inclusive and sustainable society. The carrying idea was, that with our support, individual women would find their place in the Finnish job-market through developing and launching practical solutions, either as entrepreneurs or through developing non-profit projects.

Quite quickly it was noticed that instead of focusing solely on individuals, creating a community for learning and doing for a wider group of people, as well as taking the lead as an organization for certain activities, would be a necessity for achieving the change we want to see.

We have also acknowledged that there is a lot of good discussion, brilliant thinking, tips, advice and available research data on equality, inclusion and sustainability. How to turn all this knowledge into impactful action remains, however, the hardest task for most of us.

For this reason, we have decided to focus on bottom-up doing and fostering joint learning and cooperation, trying to become the change we expect to see. Through developing, testing, failing, and re-doing we hope to develop and spread functioning models that have potential to benefit also other actors and organizations working towards the same goals.

After many diverse people bringing in new ideas and perspectives, our own strategy has also been developing on rolling basis for the past four years. We are grateful for so many people joining us for a shorter or longer period, and especially for those who have decided to stay and become part of the story.

Now the vision and mission are clear: we exist to empower change towards an inclusive and sustainable society. This requires us to find new ways for participation and doing together over the linguistic, social, ethnic, and cultural – and any other barriers.

Naomi Murakawa’s famous quote provides inspiration to us, and hopingly for you too, to join the mission for empowering change.

Why be a star when you can make a constellation?