On 13th October, at 12:03 p.m., the newly created
Cooperativa Integral T'Inspirar (Integral Cooperative Inspiring You), founded on 6th June 2023 and based in Rua do Centro Republicano, no. 72, in Tomar was made public.
This co-operative is currently the only one of its kind 
not only in the municipality of Tomar but also in the district of Santarém.
However, the other informal groups that operate in this region and follow the same principles of Integral Cooperativism, are equally important in the local and national socio-economic context.
Being integral in nature, this Co-operative is known as multi-sectoral, operating in 8 sectors: education, agriculture, culture, handicrafts, consumption, production, construction, housing and services.
It is therefore a congregation of multiple means of self-sufficiency, based on the general principles of co-operativism: free and voluntary membership; democratic control by its members; economic participation by its members; autonomy and independence; education, training and information; inter-cooperation; concern for the community. The values on which Co-operativism rests are those of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality,
equity, fairness and solidarity. The values of honesty, openness and social responsibility are emphasised as the basis of these principles. 
The various existing co-operatives in turn co-operate with each other, forming a network of mutual help and efficiency that strengthens the whole.
A co-operative is, by definition, an autonomous and voluntary association of people their purposes and capacities to fulfil common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations, through a jointly owned and democratically managed enterprise.
In this context, T'Inspirar is a collective non-profit enterprise of prosumers (producers and consumers of what the co-operative promotes, facilitates and makes available) with multiple sectors,
i.e. without distributing profits among its members, but whose surpluses are reinvested 
in favour of the pursuit of the cooperative's social purpose as a whole and in each of its parts.
This social project aims to promote sustainable lifestyles based on responsible consumption and production, circular economy and solidarity economy and sharing and co-operation between people, facilitating entrepreneurship and self-employment and valuing education, the arts and culture. The aim is to facilitate personal and collective development, promoting talents and educating people to value creativity as the basic engine of life. "We believe that every citizen has the responsibility and the power to implement the change they choose and want to see in and around their lives," says Tânia Castilho, co-founder and Chairperson of the Board of Directors.
Among other purposes, T'Inspirar aims to: emphasise locally sourced products and services with a low environmental impact, reducing intermediation and facilitating access to fairer prices; to formalise small-scale production activities, allowing them to be better marketed; to implement a culture of reducing unemployment, dissatisfaction and labour precariousness by facilitating self-employment, fair employment and the concept of the prosumer; proposing and creating low-cost housing alternatives in harmony with the environment; re-educating for health and well-being; re-educating for economic, social and environmental sustainability; promoting a new education system based on the creation of projects with shared knowledge; favouring the arts and culture as key factors in the sustainable development of societies and economies; boosting sustainable development of societies and economies; boosting an economy of sharing and redistribution of surpluses, reuse and regeneration.
Interestingly, the co-operative movement had at its foundation what can be considered precisely an Integral Cooperative: the "Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers", which was born in 1844 in Rochdale, England as a result of the will and need of a group of workers who chose to create social change by helping themselves whilst helping each other in a harsh economic context where there was no other way out but to come together in co-operation to provide themselves and their families with basic health care, food, housing and education. 
The story goes that there have been since then successive legal restrictions on the creation of IntegralCo-operatives until today, when fortunately we are on the road to integrating these initiatives as fundamental drivers of the solidarity economy and social evolution towards a more participatory, harmonious and balanced context.
"It's a long road, we know, but we're taking it one step at a time and with our hearts open to the countless possibilities that present themselves when we come together to put the best of ourselves into everything we create."
T'Inspirar invites everyone to visit its headquarters, open Monday to Friday from 3 pm to 7 pm and Saturdays from 3 pm to 6 pm and to find out more about the project that will begin its full activity on 11th November but which is already available to embrace proposals and projects that fit in with its social object, which can be found in the Statutes on the website https://tinspirar.org . Of particular note is the weekend of 11th and 12th November, when the Financial Literacy, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Event takes place. The programme can equally be accessed on the website.
Article in Cidade de Tomar Newspaper