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DATES FOR NEXT YEAR!

September 7 - 13, 2014         

Mondragon Seminar and Tour
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2013 Mondragon Seminar Brochure

Mondragon Report 2012

Carl Davidson's
Blog from Mondragon 2010

Georgia Kelly's Huffington Post Article on Mondragon

Click here for Georgia Kelly video on Mondragon

Click here to Register.

Or, call

Praxis Peace Institute is organizing its fifth 5-day workshop/seminar with the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque country of Spain. The purpose of the seminar is to learn about worker owned businesses from the leading consortium of cooperatives in the world.

Basic Cooperative Principles conf
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The Mondragon Cooperatives were founded in 1955 and now encompass 120 businesses and employ about 86,000 worker-owners. Mondragon is a highly successful cooperative model with nearly 60 years of proven success. They have established research centers, bank and credit unions, a university with several campuses, youth cooperatives, 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.

Who Should Participate:

Green business leaders, educators, community leaders, journalists, environmentalists, business leaders, and all those who have an opportunity to make use of the Mondragon model in projects based in their communities or businesses. 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. The seminar will include 5 days of presentations and tours of Mondragon businesses. Praxis Peace Institute will also host a day of discussion and brainstorming about how these ideas can be useful in our communities back home and how we can find support for cooperative business ventures.

Presentations include
The history, culture, and ethics of the Mondragon Cooperatives, Mondragon's corporate management and training models, the cooperative incubation center and how it functions in creating and developing new products and services, Research and Developmet at Mondragon (the largest R & D center in Europe with 14 separate centers), the role of Caja Laboral, the Mondragon Cooperatives' bank and credit union, Mondragon's projects in developing countries, and Democracy at Mondragon - how the cooperatives are organized. We will learn about the Social systems and Social Councils at Mondragon, and we will have plenty of time for questions in all sessions. At the end of the week, we will discuss how to transfer the Mondragon model to our communities. We also spend time with students and faculty at Mondragon University and learn about their TeamAcademy degree programs.

Visits include
Fagor, a large industrial worker co-op; SAIOLAN, an incubation center for new products and services; Mondragon University, the education center where the cooperative movement began. We will also learn about the TeamAcademy graduate program (cooperative business) and meet with students and directors of this program. Visits also include a youth cooperative formed and operated by university students; Eroski, the largest supermarket chain in Spain; and Baketik, the Basque Peace Center that teaches the ethics and conflict resolution. We will spend a day at Mondragon University's new campus in Onati (a beautiful medieval town near Mondragon) and meet with students there.

Excursions                                                                                                                                                                                                Visit and enjoy tapas at the Basque Culinary Center in the beautiful coastal city of San Sebastian (the newest Mondragon Univeristy campus), a visit to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (designed by Frank Gehry and build by a Mondragón construction co-op), a trip to the Aranzazu Monastery and Baketik Peace Center in the mountains above Mondragon, a visit to Vitoria, the parliamentary seat of the Basque region, and/or Guernica.                                                                                               

Accommodations All participants will stay at the Hotel Mondragon for 6 nights. Hotel and daily breakfast and lunch (main meal) will be included in the seminar prices. Wireless Internet access is available in all hotel and meeting rooms.

Scholarships  -  Two scholarships will be awarded through the Massena Fellowship Program at Praxis Peace Institute. An Application form and criteria is available on this website by clicking on the appropriate link at the top of this page. If you have further questions, please contact us directly. or [email protected]     

Included in Conference Price: Seminar fee, six nights accommodations at our hotel, daily full breakfast and main meal, all excursions, transfers to and from Bilbao Airport (to our hotel in Mondragon, if you coordinate arrival and departure times), and travel arrangements through our agent. Airfare not included. Upon registration (with a $500 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 the hotel from the airport.

Registration - A $500 deposit reserves your space. We are limited to 24 people, so we encourage early registraion. Balances can be paid in increments, but total amount will be due by July 26, 2013. If you are registering after this date, all money is due upon registration.

Shared Accommodations - $2,750
Single Accommodations  -  $3,200

 Click here to Register!

Mondragon Cooperative Headquarters

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Praxis members of the 2010 seminar with Mikel Lezamiz (on left).

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The grounds at Otalora, the Mondragon Education Center

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Otalora Educational Center

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A Street in Mondragon

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