Dear worker co-op friends and allies,
Thank you for your ongoing support of TESA. We know that you may have already received an outreach letter from TESA today, and we wanted to follow-up further with our close allies, both individuals and organizations. We are writing today to see if you would be willing to lend your support one of our new and exciting projects, the TESA Academy. We are launching our first online course next Thursday, “Introduction to Co-ops.” This course will take place on March 13th and March 20th from 4:00 – 6:30 PM EST.
As a part of our Academy, we are running these online courses that focus on cooperatives, which have been in development for over a year now. Just recently we, along with the North American Students for Cooperation (NASCO), received a Cooperative Education grant from the CHS Foundation in order to help bring this initiative to fruition. As a result of the grant we will offer our three co-op related courses for $20 – $80 on our sliding scale. In addition, we have a popular education course that focuses on helping participants develop the same kinds of skills we use to teach our workshops and courses and to build our resources (such as Co-opoly). All of our online courses will be engaging and discussion-based, participants will not just watch videos and respond to quizzes. Rather, they will interact with guest speakers, other participants, activities, and dialogue sessions.
In this first phase of our Academy, we will be starting out with four courses: Intro to Cooperatives, Worker Co-ops 101, Creating a Cooperative Food Economy, and Popular Education Methods and Practices. For more details regarding timing and cost of the courses you can go here.
We view these courses as both a great way for people to learn more about co-ops and to get involved with the cooperative movement, as well as a way for those who already have co-op experience to develop new skills and techniques. We know there are a lot of people out there who are hungry for this information, and we would be so appreciative if you could help us spread the word.
Here are four things you can do to help us get the word out about this exciting opportunity. Any assistance you could provide would be fantastic.
1) Spread the word on social media like Facebook and Twitter. Here’s a sample tweet & facebook post you could use, though absolutely feel free to make your own: Check out these exciting online courses about coops, from the makers of Co-opoly. Intro to Co-ops starts next Thurs! http://toolboxfored.org/academy/
2) Tell your own community and membership about our online courses through your listservs and newsletters. If you think anyone in your network would benefit from these programs, please make sure they are aware of the opportunity!
3) Pass this information on directly to other individuals and organizations you think would benefit from this opportunity. This could include friends, co-workers, family members, and members of other organizations.
4) If you know someone who is interested in registering but needs more information, feel free to send them directly to us to answer any questions.
Thank you so much. This is an exciting program that will create a lot of opportunities for co-op education across geographical boundaries. We would love your help in getting the word out.
In cooperation,
The TESA team
