All 4 Each: A Unit to Empower Co-operative Consciousness

This lesson is designed to build upon the previous lesson’s understandings of how co‑operative models can work for an individual organization. It demonstrates the benefits of focusing on wider communities beyond one’s own business.The assignment requires students to use co‑operation to solve four organizations’ economic, scheduling, and geographical issues.

The Plan
1. Review the highlights from the previous lesson’s skits. Prompting questions that tie in common themes, goals of the organizations, and the obstacles/benefits that the students’ groups faced will set up students to think critically about the requirements of this lesson.

2. Divide the students into groups of four. Give each student one of the four Collective Issues, Collective Solutions case study scenarios. Ensure that each group has one of each scenario.

3. Explain that each student will be representing the entrepreneur outlined in their Business Case Study. Have students take a few minutes to become familiar with the problems the business faces.

4. Once students are familiar with their Business Case Study, have their group of four convene a meeting. Each group needs to assign a recorder and a presenter. The goal of the meeting is to explore collective solutions for the obstacles their business faces. Teachers may wish to provide
students with guiding questions:

• Could the schedules of all four businesses be coordinated?
• Could sharing of administration be helpful?
• What other sharing possibilities could contribute to the success of these businesses?
• What are the potential difficulties with these businesses co‑operating?
• Overall, would your group recommend working together?

5. Have each group briefly present their collective ideas and solutions. As students are presenting, write down important information on the board so that the class will be able to see how different groups thought of potentially different solutions. Below is the “cheat sheet” should they
miss any facts:

Yoga Studio
• Mon., Wed., Fri., 7:30 pm to 10 pm
• Sat., 9 am to 11 am
• Very busy studio at these times
• Instructors too busy to do all administrative work
• Need someone to fill this role

Art Classes
• Classes only on Tues. and Thurs., 8 pm to 10 pm
• Classes all day Saturday and Sunday
• Downsizing because one of teachers leaving business
• Will have to let go of secretary due to lack of business and high cost of studio rental

New Parent's Centre
• Open Mon. to Fri., 8 am to 12 pm
• Operates out of a member’s house – but group getting too large for house
• Need to find new space, but can’t afford high rent, as it’s a not-for-profit group
• Amount of administrative work growing due to grants, government funding, etc.

Tutoring Business
• Mon. to Fri., 3 pm to 6:30 pm, some Saturdays and Sundays
• Demand growing, but can only tutor one student at a time, as tutor travels to their homes
• In need of an inexpensive space where she could tutor a few students at once