Serving on the Board of Directors

Please think about serving on the Board of Directors of the Brattleboro Food Co-op. I recommend it.

I sure have enjoyed my board service. I’ve gotten to know so many interesting people. I’ve learned a lot about our Co-op, the cooperative movement, the growing and distribution of our food supply. I am still learning how to help govern a very complex institution.

Our cooperative is always changing. Employees come and go. There are always new products. The markets change. Economic conditions change. There are new circumstances every day. But the cooperative is the same business in the same heart of our town serving the same ends and values it always has, giving all of us a say in how the world goes and a seat at the table.

As Skye Morse suggested in this space last month, directors watch over the organization, and ensure that our General Manager serves the ends and the means upon which we have developed this cooperative.

As I prepare for each month’s Board of Directors meeting, I learn something I did not know.  Usually several somethings. Every meeting I attend I marvel at how different each of us is, and at how rewarding and challenging it is to talk together about a common good that we value together.

Take stock of yourself. Our Co-op is your Co-op. If we don’t serve the Co-op the Co-op won’t serve us. If you are comfortable with diversity, disagreement, joint decision-making, shared goals, and a shared conversation that never ends, step up please to serve on our board.

We laugh together a lot, but we take what we do very seriously.

The Brattleboro Food Co-op is one way that we all together exercise deliberate control over our individual lives, our community, heck, the planet itself. Our world both shrinks and grows at alarming rates. What difference can we make? We can make the co-op difference.

So, please won’t you think about serving on our board? I leave you with this:

Our leaders got confused.
So we are all leaders now.
They told us there was nothing we could do.
They were wrong.
When we tell ourselves there’s nothing we can do, we are wrong.
. . .We’re all making the soup we’re all eating.
We’re all weaving the cloth we’re all wearing.

~Anne Herbert and Paloma Pavel

By Wesley Pittman