28 August 2011
Together with the ILO International Training Centre in Turin, COOPAfrica has published a Project Design Manual. A step-by-step tool to support the development of cooperatives and other forms of self-help organizations. The manual provides cooperatives and other types of self-help organizations with practical guidance to formulate project proposals that are economically, socially, politically and environmentally viable. It covers all the steps of project design: from the identification of the main problem to be addressed, to the planning of the project implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
10 October 2010
The document Cooperatives in a world in crisis was organized by the Division for Social Policy and Development of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) in coordination with the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) in New York.
13 August 2010
This paper examines the relationship between worker co-operatives and employment law in Canada. It considers the definition of an employee, the rights of members, the rights of employers, the method of proper termination and the role of labour unions. It provides recommendations for worker co-operatives to consider as they navigate the legislation in order to create a strong co-operative and a workplace beneficial to its membership.
5 August 2010
The Guide to International Credit Union Legislation allows researchers and policymakers to compare and contrast provisions of laws based on 50 standardized categories identified by WOCCU. While other organizations have compiled regional summaries, this is the only known resource of its kind to contain credit union and financial cooperative legislative and regulatory summaries for over 100 countries and political provinces worldwide.
13 July 2010
All businesses need some base capital to finance their start-up, and this is typically provided by the owner. In a cooperative, this means that the members of the association are responsible for providing this essential financial foundation to the business. Equity, also known as member shares, is one important way owners of the co-op provide capital in the cooperative. Whether you have an established group of committed volunteers already working on developing a food co-op, or just considering it, this toolbox should help you better understand what’s involved in making important decisions for the future of your co-op, including how to structure your member equity requirement.
13 July 2010
Interest in food cooperatives is growing, due both to increased interest in local, natural, and organic foods and to increased awareness of economic vulnerability in many of our communities. More and more communities want the products, stability and accountability that a cooperative can offer. This legal primer is designed to provide community groups with a basic resource for understanding the legal issues involved in starting a food co-op.
12 July 2010
Getting the new Recommendation understood and used as a framework to review national polices on co-operatives is a high priority for the ILO and the ICA. This guide has therefore been prepared for two groups:
a) Co-operators who may not know very much about the ILO and its system of
international Conventions and Recommendations.
b) The ILO’s social partners – employers’ and workers’ organizations, as well as ministries of labor, who may not know very much about co-operatives.
12 July 2010
This publication aims to generate ideas and recommendations for how the cooperative and Fair Trade movements can work together to provide an alternative to purely profit driven value chains. It will suggest ways in which co-operatives can build on some of the work done with the Fair Trade movement to create a model that can start to address the twenty first century challenges of climate change, development and the food crisis.
12 July 2010
Argentina experienced its most devastating economic crisis in December 2001, which plunged much of the country, the lower and middle classes alike, into poverty. The crisis coincided with the emergence of a phenomenon which has since been qualified as revolutionary: the empresas recuperadas, literally translated as recuperated or recovered companies. Essentially, the term refers to businesses, for the most part factories, whose management has been taken over by their workers.
12 July 2010
This manual is not just for techies! Awesome introduction section about worker cooperatives including the answer to the sixty-thousand dollar question; what is the difference between a worker co-op and a collective?
