Press
2025
Seed Commons: 2024 Impact Report
A crew from PODER Emma helps North Carolina residents recover from Hurricane Helene.
“When Hurricane Helene brought unprecedented devastation to the mountains of Western North Carolina, the low-income immigrant communities that Seed Commons member PODER Emma serves and organizes were hit hard. But all the work PODER Emma had done before the storm to strengthen their community translated into resilience, and the capacity to drive the recovery effort from the bottom-up, led by those most affected.”
Read more about Seed Commons in their Impact Report here.
2024
Grassroots Disaster Relief in Asheville
Firestorm and Poder Emma’s collaboration for community organizing during disaster relief. PODER Emma and Firestorm communicated regularly in the storm’s aftermath, sharing supplies and resources they knew about or could put people in touch with. “If they had things that we needed or we had things that they needed, we tried to make sure that we were getting things to each other.”
Read here.
Seed Commons featuring Poder Emma
Seed Commons
A cooperative network for non-extractive finance, one that advances workplace democracy and grows the capacity of communities to determine their own economic future, starting with the workers the current system excludes.
Our investments are having real impact, right now, on the lives of workers across the country—and are laying the foundations for a new financial system in which people have control of capital, instead of capital controlling people.
Helene: Pooling Resources
PODER Emma co-founder Andrea Golden, left, and Joel Johnson, Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity's home repair director, help low-income homeowners with their post-Helene repairs.
Mountain Xpress. Posted on November 28, 2024 by Pat Moran
Read here.
Community Not for Sale: Popular Education, Community Organizing & Cooperative Economics
The Second Annual Robert Swann Lecture featured Andrea Golden of PODER Emma, a community ownership and cooperative development organization in Asheville, NC. Andrea delivered her lecture, “Community Not For Sale: Popular Education, Community Organizing and Cooperative Economics,” on Saturday, March 30th at Race Brook Lodge in Sheffield, MA, followed by a Q&A.
How West Asheville’s Colaborativa La Milpa became a lifeline after Helene floods
Read about how Helene shifted La Milpa's focus to emergency relief.
