Resources on cooperatives

  1. ILO COOP participates in a webinar on women’s collective entrepreneurship

    01 July 2021

    The webinar, organized by SEWA, IMAGO Global Grassroots and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations focused on women’s collective enterprises and building an enterprises support system.

  2. ILO COOP Chiefs across time

    03 November 2020

    This page provides bibliographies of the chiefs and heads of the ILO's Cooperatives Unit since its establishment in 1920.

  3. The ILO Participates in a session on Gender and the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) at the GSEF Global Virtual Forum

    27 October 2020

    Representatives from ILO COOP and ILO Pretoria participated and presented at a session on women in SSE institutions that took place on October 20 as part of the GSEF Global Virtual Forum

  4. My.Coop – empowering women coffee producers in Colombia

    24 September 2018

    My.Coop – training on agricultural cooperative management has strengthened entrepreneurial and organizational capacities of at least 315 women coffee producers in Colombia since 2016.

  5. Cooperative of Associated Work Planeta Verde: Improving living conditions of waste pickers in Colombia

    23 August 2018

    "Spotlight Interviews with Co-operators" is a series of interviews with cooperators from around the world with whom ILO officials have crossed paths during the course of their work with cooperatives. On this occasion, ILO interviewed Martha Elena Iglesias, a waste picker and the leader of Cooperative of Associated Work Planeta Verde in Colombia.

  6. Redesol - Building sustainable and solidary links among waste pickers in the informal economy in Brazil

    20 June 2018

    "Spotlight Interviews with Co-operators" is a series of interviews with cooperative leaders from around the world with whom ILO officials have crossed paths during the course of their work with cooperatives. For this issue ILO interviewed Ms Sonia Dias, Waste Picker Sector Specialist at Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) on Redesol, a network of cooperatives of waste pickers in Brazil.

  7. Cooperatives meeting informal economy workers' child care needs - A Joint ILO and WIEGO Initiative

    25 April 2018

    Cooperatives set up and run by workers in the informal economy are among the solutions in meeting women workers’ care needs, while also helping protect their labour rights. This report complements the ILO's previous studies with cases from Brazil, India, and Guatemala on how informal economy workers’ organizations can mobilize through cooperatives to provide child care services to their members. The case studies highlight diverse forms of child care provision and outline the varied partnerships needed to implement and sustain child care services for informal economy workers.

  8. Role of cooperatives in rural women empowerment discussed during a side event at CSW62 in NY with ILO participating for COPAC

    26 March 2018

    The Permanent Mission of the Dominican Republic to the United Nations organized a side event at the 62nd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York focusing on the role of cooperatives in rural women empowerment.

  9. Transforming our world: A cooperative 2030 - Cooperative contributions to SDG 5

    08 March 2018

    This brief is part of the Transforming our world: A cooperative 2030 series produced by the Committee for the Promotion and Advancement of Cooperatives (COPAC). Through a series of 17 briefs, one for each Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), COPAC hopes to raise awareness about the significant contributions of cooperative enterprises towards achieving the 2030 Agenda in a sustainable, inclusive and responsible way, and encourage continued support for their efforts. This brief in the series focuses on SDG 5 – achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.

  10. The 2017 edition of the ITC ILO Gender Academy includes an elective and a master course touching upon cooperatives

    27 November 2017