HOSCO SHIFT
HOLISTIC ORGANIC SUSTAINABLE COOPERATIVES
Sustainable Food Cooperative Incubation for Economic Development
FOOD PRODUCTION
JOB TRAINING
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
COOPERATIVES
HOSCO produces a variety of staple and specialty produce items that are distributed to residents through grocery delivery, community engagements events and local schools and early childhood centers in the St. Louis City
HOSCO's focus on cooperative development is centered around entrepreneurship training with a focus on careers in food production and community development.
All of our programs will focus on rebuilding the community by applying knowledge through practical hands on cooperative dynamics.
Members of HOSCO Cooperative business pays lower or stabilized prices for products and services because of the buying power of the cooperative.
Our Strategy
Empower people living at or below poverty levels by training and providing skills needed to work or run your own food business. We can shift the consumer based mindset towards a producer mindset provide an opportunity to obtain trade skills that become life skills. Entrepreneurship requires constant education, to build local economics, thus improving health. Strengthening and connecting families are driven by the cooperative programs:
Engage and Enroll
Utilizing our current workforce training with community members to create a network of support for the cooperative to build upon and develop processes and activities that serve the needs of the community. The cooperative will hold annual meetings and will focus on charette styled listening sessions where information is gathered for the benefit of the community.
Food Cooperative Incubation
Families participating as cooperative members have the opportunity to purchase lower cost groceries than traditional supermarkets saving them 35%-50% on their produce. Weekly cooperative training classes help us to inform the community about working within the cooperative model, the advantages of community food cooperatives and how their patronage is rewarded.
Cooperative Economics
Community owned cooperative businesses create opportunities for people to address key issues like unemployment and health disparities. Incubating cooperatives allow people to sequester capital leaving their neighborhoods and channels it back into localized neighborhood investments. By teaching cooperative business modeling we help people revitalize their community while creating wealth to hand down to their children thus creating a better future for their children.
SOCIAL IMPACT
We aim to empower other individuals into developing their own products in the local St. Louis community. We have grown our operations to include sustainable farming, food production, food systems development, education, training and community development.
We assist to place trainees to work after they get the certificate from the training program.
We provide professional farming and culinary training classes and provide certificate at the end of the training.
We provide resources for those people with farming skills to start up their small business and become one of our cooperative team.
We redevelop city's underutilized land for healthy food producation and provide nutrition education for community members to create sustainable communities in St. Louis..