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 […]
Watthan Artisans Cooperative
Watthan Artisans – Cambodia (WAC) is a worker-run cooperative of Cambodian artisans with disabilities. It is a training and production based cooperative that trains new students with disabilities in handicraft production and fine woodcarving. Our goal is to improve the living standard of people with disabilities in Cambodia through training and employment.
Co-Cycle Tours the U.S. to Build Support for Cooperatives
Tomorrow is the big kick-off for Co-cycle 2012’s youth-led bike tour across the United States to learn about and promote co-operatives. Read more in the attached press release (pressreleaseco-cycle.doc) and stay tuned for tomorrow’s story of the day from To The Moon, a documentary following their journey.
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 […]
SAGUAPAC – Cooperativa de Servicios Públicos Santa Cruz Ltda
SAGUAPAC is the largest urban water cooperative in the world, with 183,000 water connections serving the equivalent of 1.2 million people, out of a total population of 1.6 million in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.
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. […]