GREENFIELD — A new composting co-operative, run by former Franklin County House of Correction inmates using bicycles and serving the jail as well as businesses and residents in town, has gotten a boost from a Northampton-based nonprofit organization.
The co-op, sponsored by the Toolbox for Education and Social Action, was awarded $2,500 by the Markham-Nathan Fund for Social Justice as part of $25,000 in its first 2018 granting cycle to 11 progressive grassroots groups around the region.
The planned worker-owned co-op that aims to help businesses and homeowners get rid of compostable waste and give former inmates a chance to run their own business, grew out of a Greenfield Community College course offered at the jail and a “think-tank” discussion group about how to give former inmates a foothold in re-entering society. The discussions that grew out of the college’s food and farm systems classes at the jail explored the difficulty of giving those being released a chance to re-enter the community and control their economic destiny. It aims to be launched this year, according to organizers.
Expressing appreciation for the funding, project spokeswoman Revan Schendler said, “Local support is critical to the health of new cooperatives, especially one whose owners face social stigma. Last year, Markham-Nathan supported a ‘co-op academy’” at the jail, where incarcerated interns developed a feasibility study and business plan for the co-op.
During the 12-week program, she said, they also “went on field trips, consulted with experts in the fields of composting and cooperatives, and made a public presentation of their findings and work. This year, Markham-Nathan’s vision and generosity will help fund the designing of an apprenticeship program to prepare worker owners to assume full responsibility of the business. As soon as we can find a truck and trailer for under $6,000, we’ll begin hauling to another generous supporter, Martin’s Farm.”
The fund — which was organized in 2009 and plans to award a second round of grants of up to $2,500 this year to groups with budgets less than $150,000 — honors the work of the late advocate of worker rights, economic justice, social change, and single payer health care, George Markham, and late physician Mike Nathan, a civil rights activist murdered while attending a 1979 anti-Ku Klux Klan march in Greensboro, N.C.
It is dedicated to funding organizations working to end poverty, racism and xenophobia, war and militarism, sexism and homophobia, and environmental injustice.
The fund also awarded grants to other groups, including $2,500 to Traprock Center for Peace in Greenfield. The money will go to build a “peace and justice library” and bring social justice activist Iris Morales to Wendell for an Earth Day observance Sunday. Other recipients include Climate Action Now, Western Mass Medicare for All, Real Cost of Prisons Project, the Resistance Center for Peace and Justice and Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership.
On the Web: www.markhamnathanfund.org