** Dear readers, unsurprisingly, we love to support worker-owned and cooperative businesses over here at Village One … so we thought it might be nice to share a list, in case you’re still looking for a last-minute gift or simply want to treat yourself. No affiliate links, just honest recommendations for organisations that make the world a little more equal, empowering and democratic. Let’s dive in! ** ## Duralex glassware Chances are you’ve seen these iconic French glasses in a café before. In 2024, the company was taken over by its employees, forming a worker-owned cooperative. Read about the story here, find their shop here. Everyone needs quality glassware, so this is an easy pick! ## ROTERFADEN ROTERFADEN produces paper/analog organizers and calendars, with great attention to detail and a focus on sustainability. Last year, its founder Beate transferred ownership of the company to a cooperative structure, inviting her team to become co-owners. Here’s an article in German about the transition and this way to their website + shop. Highly recommended! ## Coffeeeeee! Coffee makes a great gift, but it’s also often produced under exploitative conditions. We’ve met a bunch of coffee collectives over the years, who really care about the whole journey. Check them out: Flying Roasters, Quijote Kaffee, Café Libertad, Café Chavalo, Aroma Zapatista. ## Soap, tea and chocolate Looking for something consumable that’s not coffee? We’ve got you covered: How about getting some tea from Scop-Ti in France? Or soap from Vio.Me in Greece? Arte even made a documentary about them. Looking for chocolate? Take a look at Equitable, a cooperative working with other smaller co-ops to produce sustainable and organic chocolate. ## Drinks, drinks, drinks There are a bunch of collectives and cooperatives out there that produce various drinks: * Kolle Mate / zickzack-Kollektiv (various lemonades, mate) * Premium Kollektiv (beer, lemonade, mate) * Habitat Weine (wines from a cooperative vinyard) ## Movie night: „Ohne Chefs“ / “Without Bosses” In this documentary about collectives and cooperatives, film maker Mario Burbach interviewed workers who run companies without traditional hierarchies. It was released just this year, half of our team has seen it, and we still talk about it often. Watch the trailer here and find out where it’s being shown on the movie’s website. ## Board games Tesa Collective makes progressive board games with titles such as “Space cats fight fascism”, “Strike: the game of worker rebellion” and “Co-opoly: a game of skill and solidarity, where everyone wins or loses”. We haven’t played them yet ourselves, but we’ll eventually get one for an upcoming team week. Check them out! ## Books Our favorite feminist book store is “She said” at Kottbusser Damm, in Berlin. They are not yet a cooperative, but planning to become one, and regardless, every local book shop is worth supporting. Learn more about them and take a look at their online shop. They also sell vouchers, if you can’t decide what to get! ## Bikes A bike shop that’s also a collective? Hell, yes! If you’re in Berlin and need to get your bike serviced, Radspannerei is the place to visit. Looking for something more fancy? We recently learned that Spanish bike manufacturer Orbea is a worker-owned cooperative, part of Mondragon. Read more about their values here. ## Trumpets, tubas and trombones On the off-chance that you or someone you know cares deeply about brass instruments: Miraphone is a worker-owned manufacturer of musical instruments from Germany. They’ve been around since 1946 and you can find a short video with impressions on YouTube. Then take a look at their collection! ## Supporting cooperative journalism The German cooperative newspaper taz is collectively owned by more than 25k readers and they have an unusual initiative: You can sponsor a weekly newspaper subscription for a person in prison, establishing an important link to the outside world. Learn more about “taz in den Knast”. Other German journalism cooperatives worth supporting would be Krautreporter and Riff Reporter. ## Other cooperative gift guides Need more inspiration? We’ve found a bunch of other cooperative gift guides, but most of them are US-centric. If that’s where you live or you’re simply curious, then here’s a list: * Yes Magazine: 18 Holiday Gift Ideas—From Co-ops (from 2015) * #ShopCoop from USFWC * Co-op holiday gift guide from NCBA USA * Ethical Christmas gift guide for co-operators * Co-op Gift Guide from Wedge (from 2023) ## Why not become a cooperator yourself? Some of the organisations on this list are owned by their workers, but others feature open membership, so you’re able to become a co-owner, too. Wouldn’t it be cool to own a piece of a vinyard, a newspaper or even a supermarket? Something to ponder over the holidays! Did you end up buying something based on this list or know of a co-op we forgot to mention? Do let us know! Wishing you calm holidays, Doro, Harry and the Village One team

**** **We’re****Village One****: A deliberately small, remote-first, multidisciplinary team of researchers, designers and developers, teaming up with progressive clients on ethical design and technology. We are incorporated as a worker-owned cooperative and operate in a four-day work week, using mostly asynchronous communication. Four of our six team members currently live in Berlin.** **We are looking to hire a web developer with****Craft CMS****experience to join our team and eventually co-own the company.** Our current team, as of October 2025 ## About us, our projects and our tech stack We tackle digital strategy, visual identities, digital tools and websites with clients who are active in journalism, media, open-source software and/or pro-democracy contexts, among them the Sovereign Tech Agency, the Prototype Fund, Publix or Youth Policy Labs. See our projects page. Almost all of our clients are non-profits or small independent companies. Most of our ongoing project work revolves around the following tech stack: * Craft CMS, in combination with Vite and ddev * Tailwind for styles (controversial, we know) * Mostly vanilla Javascript or Typescript, with sprinkles of Alpine.js, Vue.js or React, depending on the project * A focus on responsiveness, performance and especially accessibility * Designs are created in Figma as component systems and thoroughly documented The codebase for our recent relaunch of Prototype Fund’s website is open-source: feel free to poke around the code. Most of our projects are set up similarly, so this is a good example of a site you’d likely be working on. Some project impressions—find more on our projects overview ## About the person we’re looking for Recently, one of our developers decided to leave the team by the end of January 2026 and so we’re searching for a new technical person to join us. Including this new person we’ll be three devs in the team. We generally believe that skills can be picked up along the way, but in this case we’re looking for somebody who hits the ground running, since we are replacing a current team member. **Therefore, we need you to have experience with (and be excited about working with) Craft CMS and Tailwind. Even if we chose a new tech stack for future projects, several Craft-based sites will need to be maintained and extended for years to come, so you should enjoy working within this ecosystem.** We are aware that this massively shrinks the candidate pool, but we need to be realistic about what this job entails. **Requirements** * You are an experienced web developer, having worked on non-trivial websites and/or webapps * You have experience with Craft CMS, Tailwind and hosting PHP-based sites * You have an eye for design and experience with digital accessibility * Your communication is clear, in written and spoken form, in English * Your location has a solid overlap with CET/Berlin working hours * You don’t need to have prior experience with the cooperative movement, but progressive values around worker-ownership, economic democracy, worker solidarity and social justice should resonate with you. See our vision here. **Additional bonus points if…** * You make our team more diverse * You bring experience with other tech stacks and frameworks, e.g. Laravel, Node or Ruby on Rails * You have experience writing custom Craft CMS modules and/or plugins * You’re familiar with Craft Commerce (we operate two custom shops) * The more full-stack you are the better, but this is mostly a frontend developer position * You’re curious about interaction design and enjoy conversations with designers, refining features together * At the moment, some of our projects are in German. Our team language is English, and we don’t require you to speak perfect German, but it is a plus. * You are based in Germany, since that would make employment less cost-intensive for us (but it’s not required, see below) * You bring new client connections or new projects into our company Please do apply even if you don’t check all the boxes. Nobody is perfect, we certainly are not, and we don’t expect you to be. Wherever we go, we leave a trail of stickers ## Becoming an equal co-owner of our tech cooperative Village One is a a democratic workplace as a worker-owned cooperative—this means that the company is collectively owned by all its employees. Everyone has an equal voice when it comes to decision-making and equal insight into our financial situation. The new person we’re hiring through this job posting will eventually also become an equal co-owner of the coop: after six months of probation, for the low share price of 100€, to be exact. You can read more about this process in our digital garden. Day to day, this unique ownership structure means: * Next to applying your development skills, you’ll most likely be involved in new-business activities, such as writing proposals and have direct client communication. * You have no boss and nobody to report to, so you’ll need to structure your work (and workload) autonomously. This means a lot of freedom to work how you want to work, but it is also a responsibility. Of course we’re all there to support you! * We try to enable focus work as much as possible, but truth be told, you may need to work on multiple projects at times, along with being involved in internal topics. Your voice and opinions matter! * You’ll have deep insight into all financial aspects of running the business. You need no prior entrepreneurial experience, curiosity is enough. Doro giving a talk about Village One at the recent CoopFest ## About this job, salary and location Key points besides the cooperative membership: * A small, kind and dedicated team of digital designers and developers, with all of whom you’ll frequently collaborate * Open-ended employment in Germany or through an _employer of record_ (most likely Deel)—this means even though we are a German company, you don’t need to live in Germany * 32h work week, across four days * Projects with a purpose—see our wishlist/blocklist * Self-organized way of working, as we have no project managers … this means you may occasionally be the only developer on a project, but other team members are generally available for reviews/sparring. Generally speaking, we try to work closer together, but it’s not always possible. * Full-remote setup without a central office, but we get everyone together for a real-life team week once per quarter and we may be able to pay for a coworking membership if you need to escape your home office * Family-friendly setup, with lots of flexibility and autonomy (half of the people on our team have kids) * We’ll provide you with a laptop and any other equipment you need to do your work **The salary is 5000€/month (before taxes, in Germany) during the six-months of probation time, then 5500€/month afterwards. If you’re not in Germany, we’ll make sure a comparable amount of money ends up in your pocket. Please note: We can’t pay more than this; there is no negotiation and no location-based adjustment. Please only apply if you can live comfortably off this salary.** You can read your future employment contract here: in German / in English. Photo from our 2025 anniversary party, when Village One turned three years old. Photo by our friend Jorge. ## How to apply? Please send an email to [email protected], touching on the following points: * Tell us how you found us, why you decided to apply and about your journey as a developer. Generally speaking, we’d like to get to know you as a person, understand how you see the design/tech industry and what attracted you to Village One. * Include links to at least two websites that are built with Craft CMS and which you worked on. Briefly outline your role on those projects, a challenge you faced and something you’re happy with in hindsight. Can be big or small, you decide! * Let us know your earliest start date. * Please also include your favorite potato recipe and your Mastodon account handle (if you have one). * Disclaimer: We will discard applications that have clearly been generated by LLMs. Sorry, but as a small team we don’t have time for slop. We’d rather get to know you through a few grammar mistakes and typos of your own, than receiving perfectly bland and boring AI text. We’re hiring _you_ , for the unique character that you are, valuing Actual Intelligence over Artificial Intelligence! Consequently, no generative AI was used in the creation of this job posting. ## Application timeline You have until **December 15, 2025 at midnight (Berlin-timezone)** to send us your application—there’s no benefit in applying early, we will only start to review applications after this date. You will receive a brief acknowledgment that we received your application. We will then sift through all applications until early January, followed by conversations with promising candidates, hopefully making a decision at the end of January at the latest. We’re looking forward to your application! In case this job is not for you, but you know somebody who might be interested: Please forward this job posting to them. Thanks a lot!

** Hey there, readers! When we started Village One three years ago, we made a bet: that by founding a radically progressive studio, we’d attract similarly progressive clients, who’d appreciate our strong values. That’s why our wishlist/blocklist was one of the first things we published. And you know what? It worked out! ** We can now look back on 30+ projects with 20+ clients—every day we get to team up with the nicest and smartest people, who all work at organizations we genuinely find inspiring. Almost all of our clients are non-profits, active in fields like journalism, open data, open source software, strengthening democracy or education. Unfortunately we’ve never managed to show much of this project work publicly. Time is precious as a small team (exacerbated by our four-day workweek), and so our own communication is always the first thing that falls off the cliff on a busy day. Writing, designing and publishing extensive case studies? Sure, remind me next year, maybe. Every creative knows this struggle. That’s a shame, because sharing our work is undoubtedly important: A good portfolio shows our skills, brings in new projects, but is also healthy for us as team … to be able to look back and see our achievements. So after three years, we decided to finally tackle this topic, but without creating a months-long internal project that would inevitably never see the light of your screens. Rather, as a first step towards a full portfolio, we simply created a grid of project teasers, showing a selection of our work with short descriptions and a taxonomy of services. No long case studies (yet), just an overview. Range and glimpses over depth. You can check it out here: Explore our projects with the Sovereign Tech Agency Now that the grid is published, we can start writing longer case studies and replace the links one by one, to point to internal write-ups, rather than external websites. And I have to say, it was quite satisfying to work on our own website for a change, doing something for ourselves. Organisational self-care. Speaking of which: How are you doing? Has your website gone without an update for years? Did you recently refresh your portfolio? Why not let us know? That’s all for today—until next time, when we introduce our newest team member! Take care, Harry and the other villagers

**** Dear readers of this little dispatch, This is Fei, writing you probably for the last time as a Village One co-op member. But before we get into that, let me start with a small story: Two years ago, I was tasked with organising Village One’s very first birthday party. I arranged with the venue’s manager that we would pre-pay for a certain amount of drinks in form of drink tokens. On the day of the party, the manager gave me a jar full of red, round plastic tokens. When I started to distribute them among the villagers with the instruction to hand out two tokens to each arriving guest, Harry suggested that we could just put the jar on a table, let people know the tokens were for drinks, and trust that everyone would only take what they needed. We all nodded, none of us questioned Harry’s suggestion even for a moment, and I left the jar on a table. During the entire party, the jar sat there unattended, and by the end of that evening—despite lots of people showing up at the party—there were still some tokens left! When I “caught” some of our guests paying for their drinks at the bar themselves, I asked why they hadn’t just taken more tokens. They said that they were very grateful that we provided free food and drinks, they had already used one or two tokens, but were also happy to leave the rest to other guests and pay for their own drinks! This anecdote stayed with me ever since, I think about it from time to time, because it’s a simple, but good reminder of how much of the vision behind Village One is rooted in optimism and trust in other people. And it also shows how many kind and mindful people we’ve been lucky enough to call our friends, family, and clients! Sure, some people maybe took a few more tokens than others that day, but we had decided to not start our party by setting up rules and mistrusting all of our guests just to prevent a few people potentially taking advantage of the situation. I’ve recently finished reading the book “Poetry from the Future” by Srećko Horvat. In the last chapter, Horvat suggests that instead of looking at the present-day crisis and extrapolating all of it into a dystopian future which we need to save ourselves from, we should imagine a future in which we all want to live in, and derive from that the actions we have to take today. > _“To act now means to create the conditions of our future, not to follow the already written script from the past: it means to produce a crack in the present, a disruption in the imposition of capitalist temporality, the rhythm of power.”_ Anyone who has visited Village One’s website will know, this is what we’ve set out to do. The past Thursday was my last day at Village One. After three years of agency grind and a full-remote work setup, I decided to go back to working on a single digital product in a hybrid setup, which I think is at this moment a better fit for my current life situation. I got very emotional during our Thursday check-out meeting—for the most part because I’m going to miss seeing and talking to Doro, Sev, Julia, Meg and Harry everyday, but also because I’m going to miss being part of this “somewhat utopian, worker-owned studio for ethical design and technology”, which at its core is so full of optimism and trust in ourselves and in other people. I wish all the best to the current and future Village One cooperativists, keep up the excellent work, your kindness, and your optimism. I’m looking forward to catching up with you all very soon. And to everyone else: see you at the next Village One birthday party! :) Yours truly, Fei Photo by Erica Fustero, from our recent three-year anniversary party. We’re holding up our brand-new membership certificates, but that’s a story for another time.