In rural Nepal 81 per cent of women are victims of domestic violence. Nepal is home to the worlds tallest mountain, Everest. In Nepal, widows are termed bokshi and are cast out as witches. Nepal boasts one of the most beautiful expanses of nature in the world. In Nepal, a woman is raped once every […]
Patti Carpenter, Entrepreneur and ACDI/VOCA Volunteer, on the Value of Women in Cooperatives
With her keen sense of Western consumer preferences, Patti Carpenter, president and creative director of New York Citys Continuum Home, Inc./Carpenter + Company, works with artisans in emerging markets to design products that can be produced using indigenous forms and methods, and then she pitches them to such well-known retailers as Bloomingdales. Through organizations like […]
ACDI/VOCA
The name ACDI/VOCA dates back to the 1997 merger of Agricultural Cooperative Development International and Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance. Both were nonprofit international economic development organizations founded by the U.S. cooperative community. The organization helped develop cooperatives around the world that reflected the merits of joint ownership, democratic governance and economic advantage. Today ACDI/VOCA […]
Unimed: For Many an Unrealistic Dream
In the mid-1960s, Brazil had a mercantile-based medical system that limited free choice and, for many doctors, stood in the way of their dreams of professional excellence and justice. Some medical professionals began to envision an alternative structure for health care: the cooperative. This was an unprecedented idea for the medical field in Brazil and […]
Watthan Artisans work by hand
The members of the Watthan Artisans Cooperative like to say they focus on their abilities, not their disabilities. The treacherous period under the control of the Communist Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot in the late 1970s left the countrys economy teetering. Pol Pots infamous killing fields were mass graves. The number of Cambodians who […]
Clean Water, Cooperative Principles
Rapid urbanization around the world is greatly increasing pressure on public water utilities, meaning that getting clean drinking water and safely disposing of waste can be some of the biggest problems facing city-dwellers in developing countries. One Bolivian success story has shown how cooperatives might provide an alternative way for urban communities to get clean […]
Power of cooperative communication
Proyecto Coopar was created in 2009 by a group of students from different professional backgrounds. In the beginning it was a graphic design and communication initiative that worked in the co-operative sector on different projects. Since its creation the graphic design area has worked in the areas of image development, electronic programming and editorial work. […]
Co-op insurance thrives in Uruguay
Professionalism, attention, cordiality, responsibility, advice, commitment, autonomy, transparency, innovation these are weighty words, but it is a heavy task that the Compañía Cooperativa de Seguros has taken on. According to its president, Sergio Fuentes, it is building a co-operative insurance business, designed to serve generations of members for years to come. Above all, when […]
COMPAÑÍA COOPERATIVA DE SEGUROS SURCO
SURCO was established as a joint effort between important Uruguayan cooperatives, supported and advised by prestigious insurance cooperatives in America and Europe. It had its beginnings in life insurance and officially began operating on 9 September 1992. SURCO inherited from its founders a commitment to the national market, shaped by more than 50 years of […]
Reversing the Trend: The Italian Social Consortium Exporting to China
In barely 10 years, the In Concerto consortium in Castelfranco Veneto has grown to become the biggest business in the area. Founded in 2002 and covering a zone with 100,000 inhabitants, the consortium has almost 1,300 employees, including over 200 with some kind of physical or social disadvantage, and provides rehabilitation services to over 1,000 […]