Otro mundo es posible | Teresa Correa | TEDxSanta Rosa Women
Teresa Correa shares her 56-year journey with the Venezuelan cooperative movement Cecosesola, describing how the organization operates without bosses or hierarchies and has achieved remarkable success including winning the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2022. She argues that love, dialogue, and recognizing that everyone has their own piece of reality are fundamental to building community and creating positive change.
Summary
Teresa Correa begins by describing herself as an 18-year-old girl who left Caracas for the interior of Venezuela because she wanted to change the world and couldn't tolerate injustice, discrimination, and violence. Now, 56 years later, she remains committed to the same ideals through her work with Cecosesola, a cooperative movement that provided her with an ideal environment to channel her youthful energy without asking about her religion or political affiliation. She explains how she initially thought she knew everything and came to teach others, but quickly realized she was 'totally naked' and had come to learn from others instead. In 1980, when the city's bus fleet was dismantled leaving 180 workers unemployed, she participated as the only woman in a march on foot to Caracas to bring attention to their situation. Through Cecosesola, she learned to work without bosses or hierarchies, learning from each other and creating an environment where everyone can give their best. She references Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana's discovery that there is no objective external reality - each living being perceives the world through their own biology and personal history. This understanding transformed how they approach dialogue, moving from 'I'm right, you're wrong' to 'I see things this way, how do you see it?' She emphasizes that recognizing others have their own piece of reality leads to dialogue, respect, and love, which are essential for community building. Today, Cecosesola has a strong feminine presence characterized by embrace, welcome, horizontality, care for nature, and the search for harmony. The organization's unconventional approach of operating without bosses led to them winning the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2022 for their innovative way of conceiving and living community organization. Their achievements include a funeral protection fund serving 28,000 families, cooperative health services attending 250,000 people annually, and 350 farmers producing collectively to supply over 100,000 families weekly in Barquisimeto.
Key Insights
- Correa argues that effective community building requires abandoning the belief in a single objective reality and instead recognizing that each person perceives the world through their own biology and personal history
- She claims that productive dialogue emerges when conversations shift from adversarial positions of right versus wrong to collaborative sharing of different perspectives
- Correa contends that love is the fundamental requirement for community, arising from dialogue and mutual respect rather than hierarchical authority
- She demonstrates that organizations can achieve remarkable scale and impact without traditional management structures, citing Cecosesola's ability to serve hundreds of thousands of people without bosses or hierarchies
- Correa argues that the integration of feminine principles like embrace, horizontality, and care for nature has strengthened their organization and contributed to their international recognition
Topics
Transcript
Maria Luisa Martínez Reviewer and Good commitment. Well, we are a few weeks, a few months away from the Good Talk Rock Festival. A 18-year-old girl leaves her home in Caracas, to the interior of the country, because she wants to change the world. She doesn't like injustice, discrimination, violence. The thing is, well, a girl at that age, but 56 years later, that girl is still committed to the same thing, it can be something to tell. I am part of Seco Se Sola, and that girl achieved, in the cooperative movement, the ideal environment, to develop all her youthful energies. They didn't ask her what religion she was from, they didn't ask her if she had any political…
Full transcript available for MurmurCast members
Sign Up to AccessMore from TEDx Talks
The human who doesn't exist | Bill Ovenden | TEDxBrisbane
Bill Ovenden argues that behavior change fails not due to lack of motivation but because systems are poorly designed for real humans. By removing friction—small barriers that disproportionately impact behavior—through thoughtful design choices, people naturally follow through on good intentions without requiring additional willpower or discipline.
What's Really Hiding in Our Oceans | Claire Potter | TEDxUniversity of Sussex
Claire Potter, a designer and marine plastic researcher, explains the scale and complexity of ocean plastic pollution, discussing how plastic enters oceans through various sources, persists indefinitely, and bioaccumulates toxins throughout the food chain. She argues that solving this crisis requires a circular economy approach combining global legislation, system design, and long-lasting products rather than relying solely on recovery efforts.
We Thought We Were Creating Jobs: The Power of Inclusion at Work | Julie Agashiwala | TEDxRiverdale
Julie Agashiwala describes how Café Joyeux, a coffee shop chain founded in 2017, employs people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in customer-facing roles. Beyond creating employment, the initiative transforms the lives of employees, their families, supervisors, and customers by shifting societal perceptions about disability and human potential.
Stillness: Permission to Stop | Idília Ramos | TEDxPraça Gil Eanes
Idília Ramos shares her personal journey from a childhood shaped by Portuguese dictatorship to burnout as a high achiever, arguing that modern society's worship of constant motion is harmful to mental health. She advocates for 'stillness' as a powerful form of freedom and describes her school's successful implementation of meditation and emotional learning to help children develop healthier relationships with rest and presence.
Trusting your inner wisdom | Dr. Karin Luise | TEDxJohns Creek
Dr. Karin Luise discusses how the body provides signals about alignment and misalignment before the mind makes decisions, and argues that people suffer from disconnection from themselves rather than lack of potential. She introduces a three-question practice called "the return" to help people reconnect with their inner compass and prioritize joy and alignment.