Cecosesola was founded in Barquisimeto, capital of the State of Lara, in the central-western region of Venezuela, as a cooperative integration organization, on 17 December 1967.

It is a gathering of more than 50 community organizations who are active, integrated in a network of production of goods and services that embraces more than 30,000 members from the impoverished sectors of the 1.5 million inhabitants towns. Through this network, Cecosesolas has developed a wide variety of activities such as: agricultural production, small-scale agro-industrial production, funeral services, health, savings and loans, mutual support funds and food distribution. They are more than 1.500 associated workers who manage the day-to-day activities through a participation open to all, without hierarchies in the form of managers, supervisors, foremen and women.

Cecosesolas' raison d'être lies in a transformative educational process based on the creation of relations of equity, mutual support, solidarity, responsibility and respect of each other as legitimate other. They are building agreements and consensual decisions, giving ourselves the freedom to make decisions, making themselves responsible for the consequences of those decisions. Any decision is subject to reconsideration, as long as it is not consistent with our collective criteria, which are results of our consensual agreements. Through conversations and ongoing reflection on our daily behavior, they deepen their ethical relationships, the emergence of trusting relationships and the widening of the circle of ‘We’ into an ever- widening family.

Thus, Cecosesolas educational process encompasses everything they do: their

economic activities, celebrations and family gatherings, their

informal conversations, including their meetings and the ways in which they organize themselves.

As co-founder of the non-profit co-op Resilience.Earth, Erika works with communities and organizations to develop distributed decision-making tools, place-based economic models, and governance structures that evolve with both the land and the people. Her bioregioning approach is based on a decolonial and intersectional perspective and the belief in the ability of human groups to co-create more resilient, adaptive, and regenerative systems. She is a member of the Quechua nation and has adoptive family from the Nisga'a nation, communities which have influenced her worldviews and approaches when accompanying communities and organisations.

The co-founder of the non-profit co-op Resilience.earth, Oscar works on the ecosystemic articulation of the social and solidarity economy, the development of adaptive governance systems, and the creation of social infrastructures that balance autonomy and interdependence. His expertise in bioregioning and territorial regeneration enables him to design governance and economic models that center the ecological, social, and cultural specificities of each rural context. Òscar is proudly from the volcanic lands of La Garrotxa, Catalonia and from hails from the Garrotxan social and ecological movements.

Brandon Letsinger is a bioregionalist, open-source advocate, and nonprofit director based in Seattle, Washington. Since founding CascadiaNow! in 2005, he has spent nearly two decades advancing bioregional education, organizing, and place-based regeneration strategies across the Cascadia bioregion. He currently serves as executive director of the Department of Bioregion and is a co-founder of Regenerate Cascadia, a regional initiative launched in 2023 during the inaugural Salmon Nation Edge Prize to strengthen bioregional resilience and community collaboration. Through these roles, Brandon has helped build networks and resources that support ecological stewardship, participatory governance, and sustainable development. His work has been featured in Time Magazine, Vice, USA Today, NPR, The Atlantic Monthly, BBC, and The Wall Street Journal.