With nineteen years of institutional life under the model of an Associated Work Cooperative (CTA in Spanish), we act as a Health Services Provider (IPS in Spanish) institution in Colombia. To date, we have generated 150 dignified, stable, sustainable, and justly remunerated jobs to 150 individuals, and provide health services to 53,0000 Colombians that have […]
A story of one man’s cooperation
Paulino Imede has witnessed the coming, going and coming again of the cooperative movement in Mozambique, one of the world’s poorest countries. Niassa province, tucked in the north east of the slender slice of African nation which rests on the Indian Ocean in south-eastern Africa, is the former Portugese colony’s poorest province. Imede was one […]
Revival of direct trade between producer and consumer: sanchoku
Sanchoku is translated as the direct transaction from producer to consumer. It is one of the forms of business being championed by Japanese consumer co-operatives as a way of lifting the quality of food and the quality of care given to plants and animals. Sanchoku is agriculture supported by the community. It ensures stable procurement. […]
COOP Jednota sets the pace in Slovakia
There is an old Slovak saying, gold without wisdom is but clay. The same saying could be said to apply to the COOP Jednota, Slovakias largest domestic retail chain. Through the control and oversight of its member base it has been able to expand through a growth strategy implemented in 1990 and followed through with […]
Supporting rural communities with more than finance – Gromada Credit Union Ukraine
Gromada Credit Union was the first agricultural credit cooperative Oikocredit financed in Ukraine. In 1996, four women started the cooperative with the aim of providing small consumer and trade loans to market traders. Unable to approach traditional banks, farmers also began to turn to the women for support with their agricultural projects. Today, the cooperative […]
The Amazon’s Unexpected Chocolatiers
The indigenous Kichwa live deep in Ecuadors Amazonian rainforest, a region whose particular climate and geology conditions are ideal for growing cacao, especially the rare Cacao Nacional variety, prized for its floral, fruity, black peppery flavor. But for years, the beans fetched meager prices about 20 cents a pound as the Kichwa sold their harvest […]
Kallari
A Kichwa rainforest cooperative of 850 families with small farms in the Ecuadorian Amazon. An average family has a small plot (2% of total farm size) planted with cacao trees, part of their farm with other crops, and more than half of their land remains as rainforest reserves. Kallari has received international acclaim as the […]
Coopercentral Aurora ensures families’ welfare
What do meat, poultry, pork, dairy and pizza have to do with each other? In the city of Chapecó the production and sale of these products sustain lives. Dairy and pizza are some of the 700-strong product range of one of Brazils most successful cooperatives, Coopercentral Aurora, whose membership extends to more than 60,000 farmers. […]
Co-operation can move mountains
If a huge stone is in the way of 20 people, they could not pass if they individually tried to remove it. However, if the 20 people come together and work under the orientation of one of them, jointly they will remove the stone and open the way to everyone. Theodor Amstad Theodor Amstad, a […]
Saving the Potatoes of the Andes
The potato was originally domesticated around the shores of Lake Titicaca, and the Andes are still home to thousands of potato varieties. Potatoes here come in a rainbow of colours: red, pink, purple, yellow, orange, black, blue. This invaluable wealth of genetic diversity is at risk from increasing agricultural standardization and climate change, but a […]