Today is the day! The first day of my international cooperative immersion experience. I arrived in Rome on Sunday, two days prior to my first day with Danila. Sunday was a bit rough due to walking into my air Bnb only to be overwhelmed by the smell of cat urine and the sight of a large stain on the couch, but the day turned around once I relocated to a hotel. To recover I sat down at a cute small restaurant close to the train station and my hotel where I tried cacio e pepe for the first time. It did not disappoint. My goal was to eat as many different pasta dishes as possible while in Rome. Now, I had been to Rome before so I did not feel the need to go back to all of the main sights. Instead, I spent all day Monday exploring the less touristy areas and of course, shopping. I toured a beautiful cathedral, tried my first cafe americano (not a fan), and went to as many vintage shops as possible. Ladies and gents the vintage designer is 100x better in Europe overall, but let me tell you, the Italians know fashion. At night I found a nice restaurant and ordered a delicious carbonara and some friend shrimp. I tried to be Italian and order a 2 course meal, but ended up barely being able to eat the shrimp once I finished the carbonara…rookie mistake. Eating alone has come to be such a fun activity. I got to people watch and eavesdrop all night until a mother and son sat next to me and we struck up conversation. As I was eavesdropping I overheard the mother having trouble with the menu and so I leaned over and told her she could translate it and then for the next 30 minutes we all talked and got to know each other. It was a subtle highlight of my trip being able to meet and get to know a stranger after a couple days of traveling alone.
Fast forward to Tuesday. I made the short walk from my hotel to the ConfCooperative office in Rome where I finally was able to meet Danila. We had several meetings over Zoom leading up to the trip so I had a general sense of who Danila was, but it was so amazing to finally meet her in person. She was just as bubbly and bright as I thought she would be! She immediately introduced me to Desiree Degiovanni, Valerio Pellirosi, and Marco Battisti, all people I would eventually have time to sit down with, but we had to start the day the Italian way…with a coffee. We took a quick walk to a nearby café where I had my first cappuccino (amazing btw) with a chocolate croissant. For about 20 minutes we sat and introduced ourselves while getting on the same page about what I was doing at ConfCooperative
Women In Co-Ops
Back at the office I had the amazing opportunity to sit down and listen to Desiree speak about her role at ConfCooperative, as an ambassador for equal rights. She gave a great presentation on gender equality and the many women cooperatives across Italy and I was truly astonished. As a feminist woman myself, this was an amazing way to start my week and a half tour. This was also my first multilingual presentation. I unfortunately do not speak Italian and Desiree does not speak English so as she presented in Italian, Danila translated it to English for me. This in and of itself was an important experience for me. As I start my career, I imagine I will be in many similar situations, and I feel thankful to be able to experience working through language barriers at such a young age.
Let’s begin with the basic knowledge I learned about cooperatives before we take a closer look at women in cooperatives. First and foremost the biggest piece of the puzzle is that cooperatives often used to advocate for change. People come together under this enterprise, a cooperative, to combine their efforts to fulfill a need or create a positive change. There is a large structural aspect to this and I am going to try my best to explain it. ConfCooperative is one, and the largest, of 3 major institutions for co-ops throughout Italy. There are 16,874 Co-ops in Italy under ConfCooperative. The second largest institution is LEGOP, and the third and smallest is ACGI. This goes for all 3, but ConfCooperative is then broken into 3 administrative levels. There is the national, which is based in Rome, regional level, and finally local level. In 2011 all three co-op institutions formed the Italian Cooperative Alliance, or ICA. It just so happens the president of ICA is also the president of ConfCooperative and his job includes meeting with the prime minister as the highest and only point of contact for advocacy. Now under ConfCooperative there are 9 sectors. They are: consumers, workers, agri-food, social, housing, health, banking, fishing, and one other I can’t seem to remember.
Back to women in cooperatives. “Cooperative Feminili” is the term used for co-ops consisting of at least 60% women. These are social co-ops that advocate strongly for gender equality. Only 3782/16874, or 37% of the total co-ops in Italy under Confcoop are co-op feminilis. Women cooperatives are pretty much an entire sub division because there is a system within them as well. There is a commission consisting of 64 women across Italy where there are 2 representatives for each region. There are also 12 sub-commissions to communicate between the co-ops and the national commission. If my 5th grade US government education is correct, I compare it to the house of representatives. These 64 women come together and push forward, or lobby, for the government to make change for the betterment of gender equality within all of Italy. They advocate for women in general, and this is relatively new considering it wasn’t until 2005 that the commission was created. Before that, Confcooperative was very male dominated and Giovanna Zago (hopefully I spelled that correctly) stepped up to make a change. Desiree worked closely with her and now cooperative feminili’s are growing and advocation is strong. Growth is at the forefront of what they do and it can be seen and advocated for across the board. As women advocating for women, their goals are to advocate for women throughout the country, emphasize a work life balance, equal pay and diversity, and to promote women to executive positions when possible.
Now I want to talk a bit more about work life balance because this is something I found interesting within the culture. Women, similarly in the United States, are typically looked at to care for a child rather than the father figure. The same is to be said here in Italy, but the education system makes a very large difference. Schooling after the age of 3 is common, but before that there are very few institutions that will take in and educate your child, and the ones that do are private so they are very expensive. That being said, it is socially expected that the mother completely stops or barely works for the first 3 years of her child’s life. For women who need their own income this is incredibly difficult and that is something that women co-ops are understanding of and are trying to change. A co-op is a much more flexible enterprise which is a great place to really integrate the importance of a work-life balance. That is something incredibly important to me as a young woman starting her career and so it was great to know that it was at the forefront of the goals for cooperative feminilis.
Lunch With Danila
After Desiree’s presentation, Danila and I went out to lunch. We didn’t have too much time due to Danila’s busy afternoon but we walked to a small restaurant down the street where I had a traditional amatriciana pasta dish. Despite only sitting down for half an hour we had one of the most important conversations of my entire trip. We gave each-other in depth introductions considering this was our first time meeting in person which led to Danila asking me about my interests. I explained my top interests are sustainable fashion and sewing. As I mentioned in the previous blog, I run a small business on Instagram reselling and upcycling second hand clothing. We spent the rest of our lunch brainstorming how I could create a co-op to grow and continue my business. Simplified, I would need at least 2 others who have similar passions in order to create a co-op and from there we would all work together and split the profits. Whether it be two other people who enjoy reselling or a seamstress and a curator, the group would come together to share resources and grow the business through a shared model. Previously, as I learned about co-ops I was intrigued, but they seemed much larger than me. The co-ops I had briefly learned about before advocated for gender equality or social economy. While those are incredibly important, co-ops can be an ideal business entity for those who would like to remain small but share the same goals and can help each other out. This was the first time in my co-op journey that I was able to put it into perspective for myself as a viable option for my future career path.
Ex-Con Restaurant Co-op
Once we wrapped up our delicious lunch and amazing talk, Danila had to run and I had the rest of the day free. I went back to Confcooperative headquarters to work on this lovely blog for a couple of hours before venturing out. During coffee this morning Valerio told me about a co-op restaurant that hires ex convicts as chefs. Due to limited time I didn’t get too much detail, but I thought I would go check it out in my free time. The restaurant is called Terre e Domus and is in a prime location! It is located right across the street from the Altar of the Fatherland which of course I trekked up to the top of despite the large amount of stairs. By the time I arrived, around 6 PM, the kitchen was closed so I sat and had a cafe latte (also didn’t like) while I caught up on some journaling. Even if I did go during lunch hours I would not have met any of the ex-convicts, but I wanted to go see the place and contribute to the co-op community. I have taken a criminal justice class in the past and am well aware of how difficult it can be for those to find employment once released. That’s why a co-op like this is so amazing. These employees can learn how to cook in their time in prison and then once released they have a place in the workforce. This is not advertised at the restaurant, only something I learned from talking to Valerio who works with the restaurant, but I think it is a much more important co-op than many realize.
Lastly, at night I went to a cute little pizza shop and decided to bring the book Desiree gave to me earlier. It is filled with information about co-ops in general, but mostly women in co-ops. I thought it would be nice to further my knowledge and have something to do at dinner. Unfortunately my reading was interrupted. The tables in these small restaurants are very close together and there happened to be an older gentleman sitting at the table right next to me on the same side. Every 2-5 minutes he would speak to me or offer me some of his cheese, but the problem was he did not speak English and I don’t speak Italian. I explained I speak English and the rest of his remarks I replied with a head nod, but as a woman traveling alone I was uncomfortable. The food was delicious but I asked to take my meal to go after eating a couple pieces and left as soon as I could. I called a friend on my walk back and was very aware of my surroundings the entire way out of fear he might follow me. Thankfully he didn’t, and maybe he was just a nice Italian man trying to share some cheese, but it is never worth it to be naive in that situation. This was the only time on my entire trip I felt the slightest bit unsafe. I was nervous going abroad alone for the first time as a woman, but felt very safe 99% of my time there. I think this is important to share for all of you, but ladies specifically. I never drank more than one glass of wine, always updated my friends and family what I was doing, and was always aware.
International Cooperative Immersed 
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