ReGen - Regenerative Cooperative

Description

Thomas Hann:

"In this context, “regenerative” is meant in the literal sense: reconstructive, revitalizing. This distinguishes them from traditional-style cooperatives.

The regenerative cooperative (reGen) is a business model with a focus on the sustainable development of their respective region. It not only preserves, but regenerates the nature of its surroundings and the quality of its community and understands the individual development and health of its members as additional relevant balance sheet values."

(https://www.thomashann.de/the-regenerative-cooperative/?lang=en)

Discussion

Thomas Hann:

"Regenerative cooperatives arise from the desire for better living conditions and from the awareness that each member of the community brings individual values ​​and effectiveness. How the community aligns itself and which intermediate steps are right and sensible for joint success is shown in the current joint action – in this way there is no desired, normative final state, but always the pragmatic and jointly agreed next step.

This is where the special concept of the regenerative cooperative comes into play, in which soft values ​​such as quality of life, usefulness and individual development of potential are striven for with the same commitment as hard values. In most German cooperatives, the economic promotion of the members is the focus and thus a purely economic and material orientation. Although this is an existentially important basis for every form of business, it only provides a limited motivating basis for a social and emotional structure. This is currently also evident from the problems faced by many energy and citizens’ cooperatives in Germany, where the initiators have great difficulty in finding new members and successors for their own activities. Many of these cooperatives are handed over to larger organizations or dissolved when they could actually provide stable value and revenue for their local community.

Can the conversion to a regenerative cooperative also offer classic cooperatives and other forms of organization a perspective in order to be revived and become more effective?

The answer is yes, because the conversion alone and the associated social process is an opening for new dialogues, topics and thus members. The urgency of many issues has increased in recent years and are having an increasingly negative impact on people’s lives. Confidence in financial market products is dwindling and many social supply gaps are becoming increasingly apparent.

Regeneration is an important target here, because it takes the individual feel-good factor just as seriously as ecological and economic goals. It creates a new dimension of added value by merging the reconstruction of natural habitats and the development of individual potential into a striving and making success visible to everyone involved. It creates new substance in people’s immediate living environment and enables money to be invested in values ​​that create a stable existential basis for the community. Independence from international sources of goods and energy promotes sovereignty and creates a strong local identity. Local food, educational and cultural offers help the young people to open up new perspectives in their home region. Older people can secure a dignified old age in familiar surroundings and meaningful support can be created for families. A regenerative cooperative is a very good basis for meeting the needs and demands of a community with and for each other. As many parts of the local assets as possible are then used in such a way that they create the best possible added value for everyone.

Because everything that we know today as a global economy, states or alliances emerged from small, local communities. Communities are the places of origin of our modern industrial culture and unfortunately have not been honored enough or protected from them. Now they can become the birthplace of a new “(G)loCal” movement that combines the best of both worlds and places the good life at the local level at the center of its aspirations, fully aware of global connections and technologies."

(https://www.thomashann.de/the-regenerative-cooperative/?lang=en)