Aaron Fernando

Aaron Fernando is the Development and Communications Director at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer focusing on local movements, new economy initiatives, and behavioral economics. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @00AaronFernando

Portland

Portland’s circular economy is primed for success. Can it offer a blueprint for the rest of us?

In the United States, the city of Portland, Oregon offers some leadership in terms of what this might look like in action. The city boasts a lively network of partnerships between nonprofits, businesses, civilians, and different bureaus and layers of government.

December 9, 2022

Wiyot vigil

How to give the land back

The Wiyot Tribe and Cooperation Humboldt are working together to form a type of Community Land Trust (CLT), Dishgamu Humboldt, the first of its kind, to structurally ensure that the Wiyot tribe will maintain decision-making power in this land trust, forever.

September 13, 2021

Cooperatives Unleashed report

UK Co-operative Party Releases Report Outlining Plans to Double the Size of Co-op Sector

On July 3, the Co-operative Party in the U.K. launched a report at parliament outlining a strategy to double the size of the U.K.’s cooperative sector by 2030. The report, written by the think tank New Economics Foundation (NEF), was commissioned by the Co-operative Party and comprises a vision of the party’s goals.

July 10, 2018

Blockchain as a Force for Good: How this Technology could Transform the Sharing Economy

When we find ourselves in a world fully immersed in blockchain, we will find that it is a permanently transformed one — one where cooperatives, schools, and neighborhood groups have many of the same technological advantages as governments and multinational corporations.

May 30, 2018

How Indigenous Land-Use Practices Inform the Current Sharing Economy

Affordable housing-related CLTs are probably best-known, but this model can be applied for any community goal, including lowering costs for small businesses and ensuring local food production. Though the CLT model has been re-emerging since the late 1960s, it is actually somewhat of a return to indigenous practices around ownership of land and resources.

November 2, 2017

hands on smartphone

The English City With Its Own Cryptocurrency: Q&A With the Founders of HullCoin

The staff at the nonprofit organization HullCoin has done something very unusual in the city of Hull in northeast United Kingdom. They’ve launched their own local cryptocurrency — programmed on top of Bitcoin to be issued by nonprofits and social institutions — as a way of combating financial exclusion and other problems that are at the root of poverty. Residents of Hull can earn HullCoins, which can be used at various places around the city. It’s an innovative model. But how exactly does it work?

October 27, 2017

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