COOPERATIVES IN TIMES OF CRISIS

This guide is based on recent experiences with food, worker, and feminist cooperatives in Lebanon between 2015 and 2022. It also benefits from cross-country conversations and networks attempting to adapt cooperation to platform economies and understand how artificial intelligence will impact labor rights in the coming years. You can use it for your own learning but also as a tool to discuss with others. It draws learnings from failed and successful attempts equally - and most initiatives sit somewhere between the two.
We focus here on two types of cooperatives important to our context and time: food coops and worker coops.

TABLE OF CONTENT
- INTRODUCTION
- A UNIVERSAL CONTEXT: Alienation, The Cooperative Principles
- THE CREEPING GIG ECONOMY
- THE LEBANESE CONTEXT 2019-2022: Cooperatives in Recessions, Legal Framework, General        Directorate of Cooperatives, Misconceptions about Coops
- FOOD COOPS: What is a Food Coop?, Local History, 2019-today
- THE DIKKEN COOP: Secondary Goals, The Business Model, The Startup Phase, The Operational      Budget and the “Worthiness” Question, Membership
- STARTING YOUR OWN FOOD COOP: Market Research & Product Sourcing, Types of Grocery Stores & Locations, Dealing with Currency Fluctuation,  Financing a Cooperative Startup
- MOVING FORWARD