Category: Cooperatives BRED supports

A little about Common Ground:

At Common Ground, we believe that being a food service provider today means owning a much larger responsibility to the health and well-being of people and the world in which we live.

Through worker democracy, we are dedicated to promoting the well-being of our environment, our community, and our fellow workers – especially those who face further oppression on the basis of race, gender, ability, sexuality, or other marginalized status.

We also aim to strengthen solidarity and relationships with other organizing workers, established cooperatives, and our neighbors to further build a world where the needs of people are prioritized over the profits of business.

Our beverage, food, community events, and other projects are crafted to the best of our abilities with all of these objectives in mind.

Common Ground

A little about Awaken Wellness:

Our mission is to empower our community by helping individuals connect deeply with their own body’s capacity for healing. We do this by providing a range of transformative therapies, including acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, and therapeutic bodywork, all rooted in compassion, respect, and a holistic understanding of wellness.

Awaken Wellness

EnviroCollab is a women-owned, community-based landscape architecture, urban planning, and social design cooperative focused on engagement, equity, and sustainability.

EnviroCollab, LLC

Many of you have known Metta Integrative Wellness Center for years, perhaps since it’s opening in 2008. This is Metta Integrative Wellness Cooperative. It’s like Metta, reimagined.

When Metta’s founding owner decided it was time for her to step away, we, the therapists of Metta, needed a radical solution to keep the business alive. We wanted something different from the status quo – a place where we could all continue to shine as individuals, to be uniquely ourselves, and to support each other collaboratively. We dreamed up a solution in which we could stick together, work together, and be equal partners in deciding the future of the business.

We formed a cooperative. By forming a worker-owned cooperative (or “co-op”), we have joined an anti-capitalist labor movement with a long and rich history both nationally and abroad. Co-ops are business that exist to benefit their workers and the communities they serve.

Metta Integrative Wellness Cooperative

Family owned Cajou Creamery is Baltimore’s first choice for plant based ice cream. They are a mission driven business that offers super food based, hand crafted from scratch, vegan ice cream.

BRED has been assisting Cajou with the process of opening their own shop!

Cajou Creamery

Yeleen Beauty Makers Space in Washington DC that whose goal is to disrupt the beauty industry. Yeleen will do this by providing a production and manufacturing space that will enable beauty entrepreneurs, particularly women of color, to launch and grow their own businesses.

Yeleen Beauty Makers Space will be receiving a loan from BRED to help get the space up and running.

Yeleen

Earthbound Building is a cooperative of skilled builders, crafts people and farmers that formed in 2014. Earthbound grew out of Black Dirt Farm Collective and the realization of the importance of functional, durable, and ecological farm and land infrastructure. They aim to provide these attributes of a sustainable food system through Timber Framing, Natural Building, and Agricultural Infrastructure.

In 2021 BRED helped Earthbound with a land purchase loan. They now have an operations base which will allow them to take on larger projects.

Earthbound Building

Located in Baltimore City Obran Cooperative is a worker-owned cooperative conglomerate that was formed in 2019. Formed by a group of returning citizens, Obran empowers its workers through ownership and education. Through their cooperative holding structure Obran is able to make purchases and hold profitable small to medium size businesses and real estate on behalf of its worker-owners.

In 2019 BRED provided Obran Cooperative with a working capital line of credit.

Obran Cooperative

AFS is an experienced and insured property preservation and mortgage field services firm based in Hagerstown, Maryland. A share of AFS business is held by Core Staffing Cooperative, another business that we support. AFS offers services like: property renovations, Inspections and Verifications, and property management.

In partnership with Seed Commons, BRED financed the sale of the owner’s stake in the enterprise and in five residential properties to workers. We also provided intensive coaching and support in structuring the deal, and continue to support transitioning AFS to a culture of cooperative ownership.

Appalachian Field Services

Taharka Brothers is a social enterprise in Baltimore City creating jobs and opportunities to empower Black youth and use the ice cream they manufacture to advance a pedagogy of liberation. In 2021 BRED helped Taharka Brothers take their business and mission to the next level by helping them transition to a worker-owned cooperative business!

Bred provided our first loan to Taharka to help them get their amazing ice cream truck repaired and out on the streets in time for the summer of 2016. More recently in 2020 Taharka received a loan to purchase new equipment for one of their two scoop shop locations.

Taharka Brothers