Mondragon Conference
The Praxis-Mondragon conference 2025
Due to policy changes at the Mondragon Cooperatives, they will no longer host multi-day seminars after 2024. But, we are creating a new program at Mondragon that includes a focus on the cultural, social, and political environment in which these worker-owned cooperatives thrive. It will also include one full day at the Mondragon Cooperatives education center (Otalora).Our dates are September 7 – 13, 2025. More information and pricing will be announced before the end of 2024.
Join us for an inspiring week and learn about the largest and most successful consortium of cooperatives in the world. Mondragón has proven that another economic world is possible, and that worker ownership is a practical and ethical alternative to business as usual. We study not only their democratic business practices but also the culture, ethics, and the embodiment of their ten core principles.
Best-selling author, Kim Stanley Robinson, highlights the Mondragón Cooperatives in his latest book, The Ministry for the Future, as one of the most important models to learn from in changing human relationships, economics, and culture. If you have his book, read Chapter 58 where he waxes laudatory about Mondragón.
We guarantee that this week will change your life by demonstrating what humanity is capable of achieving — and, maintaining! — in peace, respect, and solidarity. Your sense of “the possible” will be expanded.
Praxis Peace Institute has established a special relationship with the Mondragón Cooperatives and is a proud educator of cooperatives and the ethics and values of cooperatives. We believe cooperatives are an excellent example of a sustainable and socially just economic business model for the 21st century.
For Details and Questions:
e-mail: [email protected]
Basic Cooperative Principles
Founded by a Basque Catholic priest, Father José María Arizmendiarrieta, in the 1950s, the cooperatives began with one small worker-owned business. Today, with 103 businesses and nearly 80,000 worker-owners, the Mondragón Cooperatives comprise the largest consortium of worker-owners in the world.
Mondragón is a highly successful cooperative model with nearly 70 years of proven success. They have established research centers, bank and credit unions, a university with several campuses, youth cooperatives, a culinary arts university, and small to large businesses. In June 2007, the Educational Director of the Mondragon Cooperatives, Mikel Lezamiz, spoke at the Praxis Peace Institute conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Due to the interest generated at that conference, we decided to collaborate with Mondragon in offering an in-depth educational opportunity for those who want more information on how to create cooperatives in their businesses and communities, and how to incorporate the ethics that support cooperative ventures.
Why Attend This Seminar:
This program is a unique opportunity to learn cooperative models of business organization and to see first hand how they work over a long period of time. It is also an opportunity to experience the values, culture, and ethics that support cooperatives. Social justice, sustainable environmental practices, and empathic relations are the bedrock of this extraordinary network of cooperatives. With a core principle of Social Transformation, Mondragón is an ever-evolving culture and work environment.
Presentations
The history, culture, and ethics of the Mondragón Cooperatives, Mondragón’s corporate management and training models, the cooperative incubation center and how it functions in creating and developing new products and services, Research and Development at Mondragon (the largest R & D complex in all of Europe, with 15 separate entities), the role of Laboral Kutxa the Mondragón Cooperatives’ bank and credit union (formerly Caja Laboral), Mondragón’s projects in developing countries, and Democracy at Mondragón – how the cooperatives are organized. We will learn about their Social systems and Social Councils, and we will have plenty of time for questions in all sessions. Many of our sessions will now be held at Mondragon University in Oñati, Spain, a beautiful medieval town near Mondragón. Our on-campus organizer is an American professor who has taught at Mondragón University for more than 30 years.
Visits
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao
EROSKI: one of the largest supermarket chains in Spain
Mondragón University: The education center where the cooperative movement began. We will also learn about the TeamAcademy graduate program (cooperative business and teampreneurship) and meet with students and directors of this program. We will visit a Mondragon worker-owned cooperative, Basque Parliament for a session with the Director of the Basque Department of Coexistence and Human Rights.
Otalora, the Mondragón Cooperatives Educational Center.
Excursions
Visit the beautiful coastal city of SanSebastian. We will have time to visit this lovely city and its Old Town after a meeting at a nearby NGO. We visit the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (designed by Frank Gehry and partially built by a Mondragón construction cooperative), and have an excursion to Vitoria, the capital of the Basque Country.
Accommodations
All participants will stay at the Hotel Mondragón for 6 nights. Hotel, daily breakfast, and most lunches (main meal) will be included in the seminar price. Wireless internet access is available in all hotel and seminar meeting rooms.
Included in Conference Price
Seminar fee, six nights accommodations at our hotel, daily full breakfast and main meal, all excursions, transfers to and from the Bilbao Airport and our hotel in Mondragón. Airfare not included, but our agent gets great prices and coordinates our travel schedules. Upon registration (with a $800 deposit), you will receive our travel agent’s contact information. They are scheduling our arrivals and departures as close as possible so that most of us will be able to take our bus to and from airport and hotel. Our travel agent can also handle any additional excursions you wish to make before or after this seminar. If you have your own agent or are using miles, we will give you the time frames for arrival and departure as soon as you pay a deposit.
Pre and Post Seminar Travel – We can arrange to meet or travel together before and after the seminar. Madrid and/or Bilbao are great destinations prior to the seminar, and one or two nights in Bilbao prior to the seminar is usual for many groups.
The Mondragón Report hard copy is available in a spiral bound book for $20. You can order by Clicking Here. Or, you can download the free pdf below.
Registration – A minimum deposit of $800 reserves your space. You can also pay more at any time up to the balance due date.
Prices and Due dates for deposits and balances will be announced in January 2025.
The Ethics and Values of Mondragon and the Basque Culture by Georgia Kelly (PDF)
REPORT ON THE 2022 MONDRAGON SEMINAR/TOUR
GEORGIA KELLY with:
CAROL BAKTER, JENNIFER TURPIN, and ERIC ARES
Highlights from the Mondragón Seminar.
FREE video link on Praxis YouTube site: