No [wo]man is an island.

-John Donne (1624), updated text by many other women (such as, Rae Morris (2022), Christopher Buckley (2005), etc)

First off, I adore the Finnish-American cooperative movement. I have been a casual scholar of it for most of my post-undergraduate years and am proud member of Seward Coop and an even prouder (founding and build team) member of the 612 Sauna Society Cooperative in Minneapolis.

In this post, I am going to outline the ways in which I believe that collaboration is a new form of cooperative. I am not going to get too deep into the legal/business aspects of this, however — at least in this post. Let’s get into it!

First, both are based on trust. Neither approach will be successful if the individuals involved do not trust one another. Take for example our attempts at working with Ginkgo Coffeeshop this past year. If I didn’t trust Kathy to do her best in making the Finnish recipes I taught her or if she didn’t trust me to promote the business and their new very Finnish products, we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with this little experiment and I wouldn’t have been able to walk across the street from work on Tuesday to procure a delicious korvapuusti (cinnamon-cardamom roll) that I didn’t bake myself!

Second, innovative programs, products, and services can be more readily created and executed through collaboration and cooperation. Again, Ginkgo, but also an upcoming opportunity for the Finnish language learners and speakers who read this blog. On Sunday, July 24th, 2022 Luumu will be collaborating with Päivi Virkkunen to host a bonus keskustelutunti (Finnish Conversation Hour) to focus specifically on pronounciation — Päivi’s specialty in her business Ääntämisklinikka (Pronounciation Clinic). To find out more and to join us on July 24th, email us and we will send you the Zoom link! It is free!

Finally, who has time to do it all? Certainly not me! I don’t want to do it all. I am proud of the skills I have acquired over the course of my 31 years, but I don’t want to be the expert in most of them. That is why I am happy to share that Luumu has launched a new community collaboration program called “Luumu Endorses” or “Luumun ystävät” (Friends of Luumu). On this sequence of web pages, we will share some of our favorite cultural lighthouses with our Luumu community members. These include Finnish and Scandinavian language instructors, artists, and businesses that we trust and adore. We are starting out this week with our language instructors page, because we believe that at the heart of all cultural work is command of the languages of the culture in question. We hope you will check out the pages and will connect with the individuals and businesses that resonate with you.

In conclusion, collaboration is not really the same thing as co-ops, but there are definitely some similarities.

What do you think? Do you have a favorite co-op, Finnish-American or otherwise?

Yhdessä eteenpäin! (Forward together)