Emma Adelaide Back (Equal Care Co-op) as Part of Who Owns the World? PCC Conference at The New School 2019

Summary

Emma Adelaide Back (Founder, Equal Care Co-op) at Who Owns the World Conference, convened by the Platform Cooperativism Consortium at The New School in November 2019. Emma is a speaker for the Owning Our Power: Young Lions of the Co-op Movement event.

About the event: We are proud to showcase a combination of some of the most inspiring projects that have recently launched, and others that have distinctly proven themselves over the past few years. We will hear about strategies for capitalization, franchisement of the co-op model, the encouragement and facilitation of democratic governance among distributed producers, collaboration with unions, technological innovations relying on blockchain, and revenue sharing in the community. In quick succession, presenters will offer you an overview of how they are collectively making cooperative interventions across a range of sectors. Learn from these pioneers.

After working in community-based charities, mental health and advocacy services, Emma founded Equal Care Co-op in 2018 with the aim of redressing the power imbalance in the UK’s social care system. People getting support, their families, and the workers giving the help get very little say in how care and support services work and how they’re funded. Equal Care is developing a platform to match caregivers and receivers and to facilitate how the care happens, keeping the decision-making power in community hands. Through an alternative currency, they are also intending to increase the peer and volunteer support available to those receiving care. They are a multi-stakeholder co-operative, owned by those who do the work and the people who get the support. they have an Investor member class, which has a smaller proportion of the vote share and they recently closed a successful community share offer (hooray!). That said, it’s still very early, very exciting days – their journey is just beginning.