The Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative is (Co)operative since 2013 and strengthens the power and qualities of Rotterdam South by investing in active inhabitants and local businesses.

The Afrikaanderwijk is not only an area where you can find unique products and services, there is also a lot of labour potential. The Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative makes this visible by promoting these qualities and by generating talent-driven working relationships. The cooperative offers an organizational structure whereby the revenues and benefits flow toward area itself. Through strategic organization, local talents and resources are used more efficiently.

The Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative has the mission to make Feijenoord, and specifically the Afrikaander district, a stronger and more financially independent neighborhood. An area with involved residents and entrepreneurs and an active culture program. For this purpose, new services are being developed and immediately tested in practice.

This can vary from a local cleaning service to the mutual purchase of energy. In addition, the cooperative focuses on the importance of the Gemaal op Zuid as a central location for production and presentation. The Gemaal op Zuid is the neighborhood and work common from which the cooperative operates. A central location where encounters, production and presentation all come together. By sharing the monumental building with several local partners the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative managed to preserve this striking location for collective use, cultural activities, knowledge exchange and neighborhood meetings.

In 2014 the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative developed SCHOON, a local cleaning service for the Afrikaander district and its surroundings. SCHOON ensures that work that is otherwise outsourced to larger companies elsewhere is now insourced to neighborhood residents via the Afrikaander neighborhood workers coop. The Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative supports starters or people who want to make a career switch. For Vestia Rotterdam Feijenoord, SCHOON currently takes care of the cleaning of porch houses in the neighborhood. It also cleans the Afrikaander market, exhibition spaces and offices.

Since 2013, the cooperative also actively contributes to the cultural programming of the Afrikaander district. This involves working with curators and artists from inside and outside the neighborhood.

related publications

Marktwerking op z'n Rotterdams

Apr 2018

The Birth of a New Organizational Form

Apr 2015