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COVID-19: Impact on Agricultural Cooperatives
Our member, Land O’Lakes Venture37, in collaboration with USAID Office of Local Sustainability has collected data to understand impact of the pandemic on cooperatives in 8 countries. The USAID Cooperative Development Program, funded out of the USAID Office of Local Sustainability, focuses on building capacity of cooperative businesses for self-reliance, local ownership and sustainability. Land Read More
Cooperative Governance Assessment
Identifying Cooperative Board Training Needs by Stages in the Board’s Development. The US Overseas Cooperative Development Council recently developed tools to identify unique director training needs of early stage cooperatives in developing countries. This manual is a guide for in-country implementation of the tools. It is primarily directed toward staff organizers and trainers in Cooperative Read More
Context Study Kenya
What Difference Do Cooperatives Make? is a multi-year, multi-country cross-regional research study conducted under the guidance of the OCDC Research Group. It focuses on the effects that cooperatives have on the social and economic well-being of individuals and their broader effects on communities where they are located. By Barbara Czachorska – Jones, PhD Global Communities Read More
Context Study Poland
This is a desk review and an attempt to capture a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the situation of Polish cooperatives today, rather than a detailed presentation of the evolution of the movement or its branches. It cannot do justice to the analyses and empirical material amassed over more than two decades or the presentations made Read More
Key Stakeholder Presentation and Dialogue – Philippines
This overview paper for the study “What Difference do Cooperatives Make?” in the Philippines sets out the initial findings of the recent research conducted by the International Cooperative Research Group of the U.S. Overseas Cooperative Development Council. The research provides the important perspective of members of primary societies across sectors and across regions, compares and Read More
Key Stakeholder Presentation and Dialogue – Kenya
This paper provides an overview of the initial findings of recent research on the cooperative sector in Kenya and identifies some possible paths for policy and/or further debate and exploration. “What Difference Do Cooperatives Make?” in Kenya tells us that cooperatives are indeed making a significant economic difference in the lives of the members and Read More
Start A COOP 101
Start.COOP by International Labour Organization (ILO) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License. Start.COOP has been developed as a low-cost, easy to use training tool for those interested in starting and launching a cooperative in a participatory manner. It draws on technical content from existing materials in different ILO cooperative training tools Read More
Ethiopia – Side Selling
Self Help Africa (SHA) has been implementing a project since 2010 targeted at increasing the income of malt barley farmers in Ethiopia through more effective cooperative management in Arsi and West Arsi Zones of Oromia region. The project has been supporting Galema and Raya Kejewa cooperative unions to ensure efficient aggregation of products, better access Read More
Assessing Cooperative Training Needs in Developing Countries
It is widely known that a competent board of directors is an important factor in cooperative success. However, directors of local cooperatives in developing countries may be unfamiliar with democratic governance processes and the skills needed for effective directing. While there are significant impediments to good cooperative governance (e.g., inadequate training, weak leadership, and corruption), research Read More
Not Too Poor To Invest: The Case For Smallholder Farmer Ownership Programs
Experience has shown creation and growth of a member-owned capital base is crucial to the long-term sustainability of member owned businesses and can provide an effective savings tool and financial safety net for smallholder farmers. Information presented in the paper grew out of the results of an Equal Exchange (EE) project to introduce member equity Read More
Agricultural Cooperatives in Africa
This report is the first outcome of a joint project by the International Cooperative Research Group, a division of the US Overseas Cooperative Development Council (OCDC), and the European Research Institute on Cooperatives and Social Enterprises (EURICSE). The purpose of the research is to provide an analysis of the legal, economic, and policy environments in Read More
What Difference Do Cooperatives Make? Poland. A Pilot Study
The OCDC Research Group (RG) carried out this pilot study in Poland as the first in a series of country studies designed to understand the extent to which objective evidence will demonstrate that cooperatives provide a sound platform on which to base broad-based international development for sustainable, locally owned and institutionalized results. The Poland country Read More
Cooperative Development in Poland: A Legacy of USAID Assistance
USAID commissioned the International Cooperative Research Group (RG) of OCDC to carry out a legacy study to examine what, if any, lasting effects of the USAID assistance to cooperatives can be seen in Poland today, nearly 20 years after its conclusion. The RG carried out this study as a complement to the countrywide survey research Read More
