Are we seeing a rebirth of the community spirit and a golden age for co-operative working?

Another year has come and gone – sometimes the months flew by and at other times it seemed to drag on forever. But as we move into 2012, Benenden Healthcare itself reflects fondly on a fantastic year that promises to be a launch-board to a hugely successful 2012 and beyond.

Benenden Healthcare Society, a Yorkbased health and wellbeing mutual organisation, maintains a positive attitude in business.

This is because we are recognising in the current environment an ethos and approach to public services that echoes with the turn of the 20th century when pioneers were establishing the mutual organisations that still exist today.

In Benenden Healthcare’s own history back in 1905, a post office worker, Charles Garland, was appalled at the high death rates amongst his colleagues from Tuberculosis (TB) – a deadly disease at the time. As TB treatment was largely only for the rich, he used the fledgling mutual model to allow his colleagues to club together with low subscriptions in order to allow anyone to have proper TB treatment when they needed it.

So by sheer force of will and a strong conviction, Charles Garland made the mutual model work for fellow post office workers – and it’s still successful today with Benenden Healthcare being a thriving health and wellbeing organisation of over 900,000 members.

How is this relevant for today? With a trend increasing for customers to look towards organisations they can trust and engage with, the mutual/co-operative model appears to serve a growing need.

Organisations such as The Co-operative Group are more widely known than ever before – a key point being that customers trust in their ethos.

In short, whilst 2011 was the foundation year, 2012 can be the start of a golden age for mutuals, co-operatives and similar likeminded organisations – where the customer really does come first.

And by association, the community itself may see a new golden age, where people locally are investing more time than ever before into the places where they live and work and making them places to be valued.

Particular 2011 highlights include the York Community Pride Awards in October, of which we were main sponsors. What a fantastic evening that was – and a timely reminder that communities should be at the heart of everything we do. We all should endeavour to show praise and gratitude to the, often unsung, heroes of York.

We were also delighted to sponsor the ‘Best Business and Community Link’ at the Press Business Awards in November. A new category for this year, judging the category was tough and we took heart from the efforts of so many businesses to instil community values into their everyday work.

Whilst 2012 promises to be a year of challenges for most people and most organisations, it’s good to take heart from the fact that the community appears stronger than ever – and we hope to do our bit to help keep that going.