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The Bay Area is home to many successful worker-owned cooperatives, including some founded nearly 40 years ago (Cheese Board Collective and Missing Link Bicycle Cooperative in Berkeley; Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco).

"And now is the time to create inclusive business opportunities like these right here in Richmond," says Michele McGeoy, Solar Richmond's Executive Director.

Cleveland, Ohio, a city with a rate of unemployment (17%) which parallel's Richmond's (18%), recently launched its own set of worker-owned businesses, the Evergreen Cooperatives, including a solar one.

"Everybody is looking for alternatives and new ideas to stimulate business development, and this is one of them," Richmond’s Mayor Gayle McLaughlin recently said. "We can't continue with the same strategies, and these co-ops offer the chance to create new jobs and build personal wealth."

To further research cooperative business development, Michele received a scholarship to go to Mondragon, Spain, the birthplace of the modern-day worker-owned business.

"I am absolutely grateful and thrilled to have this opportunity to visit Mondragon and learn firsthand what has made these worker-owned businesses so successful for the past 55 years," says Michele, "and to bring this wealth of knowledge back to Richmond so we can put it to use."

Thanks to the generous support of individual donors and funders - including the California Endowment, the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, the Walter S. Johnson Foundation and the Surdna Foundation, as well as pro-bono assistance from the Duane Morris law firm - Solar Richmond is entering a planning process that will allow it to turn this vision of a worker-owned solar installation business in Richmond into a reality.