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Positive News.org
‘I want a
network of young people creating a different economy’
UK / Economics & Innovation
“I’m glad there’s an economic crisis.”
It’s not something you hear very often, but 25-year-old Rhiannon Colvin
believes that the global economic crash of 2008 and its aftermath have
presented the perfect opportunity for her generation to start creating
a new economy.
“I’m not glad that people are unemployed,” she continues, “but I don’t
believe in this economy and how it works. It’s very unsustainable, very
unequal and young people are exploited.”
As co-founder and director of start-up business AltGen, that’s what
Colvin hopes to change. Launched in May, AltGen is helping
18-29-year-olds set up their own worker co-ops – businesses owned and
managed by their employees – in an effort to help tackle the UK’s youth
unemployment crisis.
Although employment figures released in October suggest that such an
approach might not be necessary – UK unemployment fell to less than two
million for the first time since 2008 – the headlines arguably failed
to reveal the full picture. The same data shows that since 2008 the
type of employment people are in is shifting, with now nearly one
million more people in part-time work and almost one million more
freelancers than there were six years ago.
“When you look at the kind of jobs being created, barely any of them
are full-time, secure and with rights,” says Colvin. “It’s not just
unemployment, but it’s underemployment.”
AltGen is focusing on young people in particular because, since the
financial crisis began, it is the under-30s that have been hit hardest.
According to a 2014 report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies,
employment among 22-30-year-olds dropped by four percent over the past
five years compared to no overall change for 31-59-year-olds. Currently
18 percent of 16-24-year-olds are unemployed, compared with the overall
national figure of seven percent.
Colvin believes that the government is partly to blame and hasn’t done
enough to help young people: “All of the political parties are so
uncreative and short-sighted in their policies – all they’re thinking
about is getting more young people into work, but they’re not thinking
what kind of work and what future that will lead to. It’s paternalistic
instead of empowering.”
Through co-ops, AltGen – itself a workers co-op – intends to give young
people the power to create their own work. “Co-ops give us ownership,
they give us a say over our life and our work and most importantly they
allow the freedom of freelancing but with job security, workers rights
and the support of a team,” says Colvin. “And it’s not just about
solving youth unemployment. We see it as a really exciting way for us
to create a more equal and sustainable economy.”
Working together, not fighting for jobs
But before founding AltGen, Colvin felt, like many graduates, that her
only path into a career she wanted was to undertake unpaid internships.
And it was in 2012 following an unsuccessful application, for an unpaid
placement with a youth empowerment organisation, that Colvin had a
revelation.
“I was one of 150 young people who wanted to work on empowering other
young people and because this one job existed only one person was going
to do that,” she says. “I realised that we’re all fighting each other
for unpaid work and noticed that a lot of young people’s energy was
going to waste in this process and thought: why aren’t we working
together to create our own work?”
Colvin then took a break from endless applications and decided to
pursue her idea further. In the autumn of 2012 she embarked on a
three-month trip to Spain, where youth unemployment was then around 55
percent. “I was looking at what alternatives were emerging out of that
crisis,” says Colvin. “Co-ops in Spain were my inspiring answer.
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“They’re really big in Spain, so lots of young people were turning to
them as an alternative. They were going back to the land, taking over
old buildings, producing their own food, making furniture and setting
up book shops as co-ops. I hadn’t even heard about co-ops until I went
to Spain.”
After returning home Colvin discovered that things were very different
in the UK. Despite British business the Rochdale Pioneers, founded in
1844, being widely considered the first successful co-operative
enterprise and the UK currently having nearly 13 million members of
co-operatives, Colvin was disappointed by what she found. “People’s
perception is that the co-operative movement is just a supermarket and
a bank – not the diverse and interesting sector it really is,” she says.
She believes that the sector is particularly failing to attract young
people. “The movement has a vast amount of knowledge and resources on
how to create a more equal and sustainable economy, but no idea how to
communicate with young people – that’s what we do.”
Ed Mayo, secretary general for Co-operatives UK, the national body for
co-ops, agrees: “The co-operative movement needs to be more open and
less insular, reaching younger generations, which we need to support in
every way possible. The work that AltGen is doing promoting co-ops as a
viable business model is to be applauded.”
A prize for youth-driven co-ops
To get its first co-ops off the ground, AltGen is working with
Co-operatives UK and 10 partner universities across the country to run
a competition called the Young Co-operators Prize (YCP). Launching on 1
November, five winners will receive a £2,000 grant, skills training and
connection to a mentor co-op in their sector and region.
“We want to make it as easy as possible for a young person to set up a
co-op,” says Colvin. “We want it to be that co-ops are seen as a viable
career pathway and if you choose to take it, you know where to go to
get start-up capital and who can help you with your business plan. It
needs to be a supportive process and right now it’s really hard.”
But even with this support, Colvin says that getting a business up and
running will be no easy task. As well as working on the YCP, AltGen
currently generates income by running workshops in universities. But
although the aim is to expand their services to carry out consultancy
work for other co-ops, at present they can only employ three people
part-time.
“It’s a social business so it’s not about making a huge profit, but we
need to be able to live from doing this,” says Colvin. “It can’t
support us fully yet and that’s the most likely way all these co-ops
will happen. People will have to have other jobs for a while before it
gets to that point.”
However, with the UK’s co-operative economy growing by 21% since 2008,
compared to just 3.4% for the economy overall, Colvin sees the
setting-up of the five YCP co-ops as just the beginning. “We want a
network of young people that are creating this different economy, that
are sharing ideas and maybe trading with each other,” she says.
It’s an exciting prospect, and one that perhaps wouldn’t be happening
without the economic crash. “Without the crisis I don’t think I would
have been pushed to start my own organisation in the same way – it was
that experience of fighting and trying to get a job. It’s pushed people
to look at different options out there, it’s made the space for us to
create a better economy and for us to be leading the way and it should
be my generation at the forefront of this,” says Colvin.
“AltGen is the alternative generation – we aren’t the generation
without a future, we can create a different one.”
Entries for the Young Co-operators Prize are open from November 2014 –
March 2015. For more details and to apply visit www.y-c-p.co.uk
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