Mission
The Center for Cooperative Development and Solidarity (CCDS) provides educational, technical, financial, human, intellectual and organizational support to groups of people in and around East Boston, mostly low- income immigrants, to explore the creation of worker owned cooperatives as an economic and social alternative. Through our work, CCDS is contributing to the social, economic and racial equity of our community, generating decent wages, prosperous lives thus helping to forward the local and the global solidarity economy and cooperativism movement.
Vision
We envision that low-income communities of color, in particular the Latino community, can continue being part of the fabric of our East Boston neighborhood despite all the obstacles we face. We strive for a cooperative community where people are respected, happy, healthy, and have what they need to live dignified lives, so they can thrive as human beings. Part of our vision is to secure physical space to house our cooperative ecosystem and educational programs as well to offer space to the community that may need space to meet, gather and learn about the solidarity economy we want to build.
Our Story
The Cooperative Center for Development and Solidarity (CCDS) was first convened in November 2015 by Latino immigrant residents of East Boston concerned about the rapid gentrification of our neighborhood. It started with a few conversations, first among a small group of people displaced from a neighborhood apartment building and grew into dozens of immigrant residents meeting for months to try to find solutions to the accelerated displacement of people of color from our neighborhood. Many people from that original group started CCDS in March 2016. These are now members of the CCDS steering committee, members of groups exploring cooperatives, staff and volunteers. We not only work with the immigrant community, we are from that community.