Cooperative Development Institute

In this second video in our Cooperative Resilience series, CDI's Pável Uranga interviews Enrique Cal, president of Uruguay’s Federation of Mutual Aid Housing Cooperatives (FUCVAM).

FUCVAM, founded in May 1970, serves 35,000 families through 760 cooperatives in a nation of approximately 3.5 million inhabitants. With a cooperative school for children and numerous consumer, distribution, and worker cooperatives linked to their vision, they are shaping a brighter future.

Enrique Cal moved to the cooperative with his parents at age 13. Watch the video to hear from Mr. Cal as he discusses the ways cooperation has helped communities in Uruguay solve challenges including a housing shortage, economic adversity, and childcare needs: https://cdi.coop/video-series-cooperative-resilience/

When the team at Nextstage Design learned that they had won a contract to renovate a multimillion-dollar performance center for the University of Massachusetts with 1,900 seats, the whole team cheered and pumped their chests, said NJ Ollsten, a worker-owner and general manager at the Connecticut-based firm.

“Everyone, even those who didn’t touch the teaming effort or previous study, felt a piece of getting that money and feeling like they contributed,” NJ said. “That’s just one example of how profoundly things have changed since we became a cooperative.

“There’s more ownership over mistakes and victories. There’s more agency, more willingness to critique or put your neck out to try something new. It’s incredible to work in that kind of environment.”

Nextstage Design, founded in 2014, officially became a worker-owned cooperative on January 16, 2026. The company, which now has five worker-owners, designs theaters and performance spaces for clients around the globe, from high school auditoriums to performing arts centers.

Read the full story to learn why the NextStage team decided to go co-op and how they made the transition: https://cdi.coop/employees-of-connecticut-theater-design-company-form-co-op-to-buy-out-business/

On Earth Day, we want to take a moment to appreciate our Water Infrastructure Support Program (WISP) that is currently working on a project in Vermont to improve the electrical systems for 233+ low income households!

In Colchester, two adjacent resident-owned communities, Breezy Acres Cooperative and Hillcrest Resident-Owned Community, have only 60-amp electrical service going to each home. This is not up to code and means residents don't have enough electrical capacity to replace fossil fuel heating with heat pumps. WISP helped the co-ops raise $4.4M in grant funds to upgrade their electrical infrastructure to 150 amps.

By replacing aging, undersized electrical services and installing code compliant, larger capacity electrical services, this project removes a key barrier to increasing electrification, allowing homeowners to lower their fossil fuel usage and participate safely and affordably in a transition to cleaner energy.

Everyone deserves to have safe drinking water, a working sewer system, and a choice in how they heat their homes! Happy !

Learn more about our WISP Program here: https://cdi.coop/wisp/