About NOVASEN

NoVASEN is building a network of just, sustainable, and democratic alternatives in order to address the critical problems facing Northern Virginia's communities. Founded in April 2025 at the Democratizing NOVA Summit in Fairfax, Virginia, we are the area's local chapter of the Virginia Solidarity Economy Network, which is itself part of the US Solidarity Economy Network. We believe in a world where poor and working people participate in the decisions that affect our daily lives. Our efforts are inspired by projects like Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi, The Industrial Commons in North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia’s People’s Budget.

What We Do

From the prevalence of local “Buy Nothing” groups to extensive “helping trees” among Latinx communities across our region, the threads of a solidarity-based future for Northern Virginia are all around us. As community organizers, educators, and cooperative worker-owners, we coordinate these efforts to learn from each other, build trust, and spread the word. We currently host a bi-weekly reading group, a bi-weekly meeting, and are exploring the creation of a housing cooperative in Fredericksburg, VA in partnership with SECOSOL.  We meet once every two weeks on Thursday at 5:30 pm at Clarendon Presbyterian Church. 

Our specific aims include:

• Coordinating local solidarity economy efforts and identifying possibilities for mutual support and collaboration,

• Creating opportunities for gainful work that benefit local communities and circulate value locally (such as by increasing the number of worker cooperatives in our region), 

• Collectively exploring and raising awareness about the meaning and possibilities of a solidarity economy in Northern Virginia. 

Tech in Focus: We use this Decidim platform to build the digital architecture for a solidarity economy. If you are interested in contirbuting your technical skills on the IT team, send an email requesting to join RABT!

Why Northern Virginia?

Northern Virginia is famous for its wealth. From the outside, it is a seemingly endless expanse of lush, affluent suburbs astride. But these riches are far from distributed evenly. Pockets of poverty and racialized inequality, unsustainable and irresponsible urban development, and skyrocking living costs plague our region. 

Northern Virginia also has a liberatory side. There is world historic ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity in this area; with as many as 1 in 3 residents speaking a language other than English at home. NOVASEN sees this diversity as a form of community wealth and aims to make Northern Virginia a site of democratic transformation. 

Our Core Frameworks

Solidarity economy: A solidarity economy is an economy that works for all, ensuring all people can play an active role in making decisions that impact our lives. In this kind of economy, people can do work that contributes meaningfully to their lives and those of others. People direct their own labor, have access to nourishing food, are part of local government that depends on and invests in the people, and are part of communities that recognize we are stronger together than as isolated individuals. Solidarity economies are realized in the development of cooperative, worker-owned businesses, mutual aid initiatives, participatory budgeting processes, community support agriculture, community land trusts/co-housing, time banks, and community loan funds, to name just some examples. Learn more about why we need a solidarity economy. 

Asset-based community development: Asset-based community development (ABCD) is a call to change our mindset; rather than thinking in terms of needs and deficits, we are learning to recognize and cherish the knowledge, abilities, and assets that exist within our local communities. As a praxis, ABCD is when we seek to creatively and collaboratively amplify these assets and interconnect them so they are more accessible and available to the whole. 

Community power/Participatory democracy: Too often, local governments fail to recognize the importance of community creativity and community-based solutions to local problems, turning instead to technocratic, top-down approaches that perpetuate systemic inequalities and fail to address their root causes. This gap between decision-makers and ordinary people is widened by increasing political and ecological instability, leading to unforeseen shocks that disproportionately affect the poor, working class, and especially people of color. In times of crisis, we cannot wait for politicians. It is time that the people who live in communities take power into our own hands and do what’s best for our communities.

Humanism and care: We believe that the search for a solidarity economy is also a search for meaning. Therefore, we place people at the center of our initiatives, prioritizing relationships, integrity, and well-being and moving “at the speed of trust,”. We also believe that storytelling, sharing, and mutual support are essential to achieving our goals. We seek to find narratives that can unite a wide range of initiatives, from local cooperatives, campaigners, organized labor, to justice-oriented churches, advocacy groups, and community gardens as a collective force for social and economic transformation in our region. 

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