Japan is the world’s oldest country: in 2012, more than 24% of the population were aged 65 or over. This demographic trend is bringing significant public health and welfare challenges, but health cooperatives are leading the way in promoting preventative healthcare and encouraging social inclusion within communities. The Japanese Health and Welfare Co-operative Federation (HeW […]
Japanese Health and Welfare Co-operative Federation (HeW Co-op Japan)
“HeW CO-OP JAPAN” is a national federation of health and welfare co-operatives that that deal with health and welfare business. The federation consists of 111 member co-ops and Japanese Consumers’ Co-operative Union (JCCU). They provide networking among cooperatives, knowledge sharing, recruitment and nurturing of medical and welfare staff, publications, joint purchase of pharmaceutical products.
Bringing Rural Development Through a Multipurpose System
Half a century ago, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world, with rural life particularly harsh. In the aftermath of the Korean War, devastated communities were suffering from chronic food shortages. A government-led push created an agricultural cooperative system to revive the rural economy, eradicate poverty and improve the socio-economic status […]
NH Nonghyup
NH Nonghyup (NACF) is a multipurpose cooperative with four main business divisions: agricultural marketing and supply, livestock marketing and supply, banking and insurance, and the extension service, which offers guidance. Following a restructuring in 2012, the NACF now serves its members and customers through 27 subsidiaries and two affiliate organizations. It represents 2.44 million individual […]
Oasi – Porto Tolle (Rovigo) – Italy: accessible nature-based tourism in the Po delta
Promote and render accessible to everyone the Po Delta – a relatively unknown, but unique area, with beautiful nature and a fascinating history. This is the objective of Oasi, a social cooperative founded in July 2012 in Porto Tolle (Rovigo) by cooperators with decades of experience in the nature-based tourism sector and by people who […]
OASI
Oasi is a social cooperative (type B – work integration) founded in 2012 by cooperators with a nature tourism background and by a group of people with physical and motor disabilities. The mission is to make the Po Delta accessable to all and raise awareness of its unique beauty and facsinating history.
Sustainability: inbuilt in the cooperative model
In 2013 the global representative body for the global cooperative sector, the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA), decided it was time to take action on sustainability. Oft used as a term to describe cooperatives, the ICA wanted to understand in great detail in fact how appropriate and accurate the term “sustainable” was to describe the cooperative […]
Desjardins unveils the tallest indoor living wall in the world
The new Desjardins building in Lévis houses the tallest interior living wall in the world with more than 11,000 individual plants artfully arranged according to colour, texture, pattern and size covering a 15-storey wall of the new building at 150 rue des Commandeurs, in Lévis. The artwork, “The Currents”, was designed by Green over Grey, […]
The Jardins of Desjardins
Tomatoes on the roof, ferns on the walls… The Desjardins Group, Canada’s leading cooperative financial group and the fifth largest in the world, is taking the principle of sustainability to heart and introducing ground-breaking environmental initiatives at all levels – literally. The roof of a bank might be one of the last places you’d expect […]
Pulling Nigerians Out of Poverty
Nigeria, the “Giant of Africa”, has the continent’s largest population and economy, now worth over $500 billion thanks in large part to its oil reserves. This wealth, however, has not stopped 60% of Nigerians living in extreme poverty, nor youth unemployment being close to 80%. Peter Obiorah, president of the De Parach Multipurpose Co-operative Society, […]