Center for Community Wealth Building
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Center for Community Wealth Building Impact in 2022 // Democratizing Ownership
(Picture: Train the Trainer Program for Co-op Development, June 2022)
Center for Community Wealth Building Impact in 2022 // Democratizing Ownership
Our Democratizing Ownership team helped two groups of community leaders to launch new worker-owned businesses in 2022, La Casa del Mitote, an event planning business, and Cooperativa Mano a Mano, a community navigation cooperative. Together the new businesses have 16 worker owners, who are already earning steady income from their new ventures.
What is Community Wealth Building?
At Center for Community Wealth Building (CCWB), we are working tirelessly to help build a people-owned, inclusive, and sustainable Metro Denver economy that catalyzes prosperous and resilient communities, free from racism and injustice. Community wealth building refers to strategies that lift whole communities, both economically and socially, by centering the success of all their members. Wealthy communities are places of opportunity, where residents have access to quality jobs, positive relationships, family and friendships, and where their talents, skills, and creativity have room to develop and shine. Communities build wealth when all their residents have access to economic, social, and cultural prosperity.
What Strategies Build Community Wealth
CCWB builds community wealth through three strategies:
Democratizing Ownership: CCWB educates workers, business owners, and the broader public about the field of worker ownership, and trains and incubates entrepreneurs interested in forming worker owned cooperatives. By spreading the economic benefits of business ownership, cooperatives build community wealth.
Engaging Anchor Institutions: CCWB works with place-based institutions such as hospitals, universities, and municipalities to leverage their everyday business practices to help close the racial wealth gap. We help them craft and implement strategies to procure and hire from and to invest in the communities in which they are located. When large institutions spend their money locally, they build community wealth.
Strengthening Entrepreneurship in Communities of Color: Business ownership can be a pathway to economic prosperity. But too many entrepreneurs, particularly those of color, face daunting obstacles. CCWB helps overlooked and disadvantaged business owners succeed by providing technical assistance to build their capacity, helping them access affordable capital, and connecting them to new markets. When businesses owned by people of color are successful, they are engines of wealth creation in their communities.
Mission
CCWB's mission is to mobilize, facilitate, and coordinate community wealth building efforts with the practical objectives of widening community education on economic alternatives, enhancing diverse participation and fostering viable projects for the creation of just and sustainable jobs and democratically-owned businesses in the region.
Background Statement
At Center for Community Wealth Building (CCWB), we are working tirelessly to help build a people-owned, inclusive, and sustainable Metro Denver economy that catalyzes prosperous and resilient communities, free from racism and injustice.