The National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA CLUSA) organized its 3rd Co-op IMPACT Conference in Washington DC from 2 to 4 October 2019 under the theme “Power in Purpose: Building the Next Economy”. The Conference brought together 400 attendees from close to 200 organizations all over the world with the objective of discussing innovations and sharing best practices in building a stable, inclusive and sustainable economy through cooperatives.

The first and second days of the conference discussed local level initiatives of cooperatives working to improve economic well-being of their members and supporting community development. The third day of the Conference focused on international initiatives and had the participation of local and international speakers from the cooperative movement and development cooperation agencies.

A technical officer of ILO Cooperatives Unit Ms. Andrea Dávila participated in the panel “Scalability of the Worker Co-op Model” that discussed inspiring lessons from around the world regarding strategies, policies and key components of worker cooperative development, and analysed some existing challenges to the scalability of this model. Among the other panellists were Technical Specialist of Cooperative Development of NCBA CLUSA Ms. Camila Piñeiro; Managing Director of Local Enterprise Assistance Fund (LEAF) Mr. José Luis Rojas; and Executive Director of Project Equity Ms. Hilary Abell. The moderator was Executive Director of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) Mr. Esteban Kelly.