The Catholic Church teaches the fundamental importance of paying workers a living wage that allows them to meet their basic needs. Cooperative businesses are co-owned by the employees, which gives workers greater say in how the business is run, including the wages and salaries that workers earn. Those principles animate the work of the organizations creating opportunities and fighting poverty with support from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).

Seed Commons is a New York City–based national network of community loan funds that make cooperative businesses easier to start and less expensive than obtaining bank loans. Based on a “nonextractive” model, Seed Commons does not require borrowers to make payments on interest or principal until they can cover operating expenses, including market-rate salaries. With support from CCHD, Seed Commons helps workers become cooperative owners who earn living wages at companies like a Chicago-based window manufacturer, which pays $2/hour more than it did before it became a cooperative. The employee-owners now earn not only higher wages but profit-sharing checks as well.

Your support of CCHD helps workers become worker-owners who earn living wages and establish economic roots in communities that badly need greater employment and earning opportunities. When you give to the CCHD collection, you help not only national networks like Seed Commons but also organizations working to end poverty within your diocese, where 25% of your contribution stays to create opportunities in your own neighborhood.

To learn more about the collection for the CCHD and the way CCHD upholds the moral and social teachings of the Catholic Church, visit www.usccb.org/cchd.