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My.Coop training organized for skills development of vulnerable youth in Haiti
My.Coop – Training on agricultural cooperative management was organized in Haiti within the framework of a Norwegian-funded ILO project on addressing education and skills gaps for vulnerable youth.
In 2016, the ILO and Norway signed an agreement to implement a programme to fill the gaps in education and skills for vulnerable youth in Haiti in promoting rural socio-economic development in the South and the Grande Anse regions. This project, entitled “Formation Professionnelle et de Développement Rural du Grand-Sud (FOPRODER)”, aims at supporting 15 to 25 years old young women and men in the rural and semi urban areas of southern Haiti to overcome barriers to entry into the labour market especially in agriculture and fishery sectors. The project strengthens the institutional capacity of vocational training centres and provides capacity building training for enterprises in the local economy, including cooperatives.
Within this framework, the ILO San José Office organized a training for trainers (ToT) on My.Coop – Managing your agricultural cooperative from 16 to 18 May 2018 in Les Cayes in partnership with the National Council of Cooperatives (CNC). My.Coop is a training programme developed through a partnership of various organizations including the ILO, the ITC-ILO, Agriterra and the FAO to enabling agricultural cooperative managers to identify and address major management challenges that are specific to cooperatives in market oriented agricultural development.
More than 30 trainers from different communities of the South and Grand Anse regions participated in the training, along with Saint-Fort C. Dadaille, Technical Director of CNC, and Nicodème Sainmestil, Project Coordinator of ILO San José. The training was facilitated by two Agriterra trainers: Marine Umukunzi from Rwanda and Alex Danissen from the Netherlands. It focused on the first module of My.Coop: basics of agricultural cooperatives including the definition, governance, management, finance, and common challenges.
Participants appreciated the participatory nature of the workshop and pledged to organize training in their own communities, with a view to strengthening existing agricultural cooperatives and associations and creating new effective cooperative enterprises.
Saint-Fort C. Dadaille confirmed the ILO’s project is relevant for CNC’s mission to enhance the entrepreneurial capacities of cooperatives as agents of development. He also informed that 12 cooperatives were set up in Artibonite within a year and there are currently 251 cooperatives in the country, 154 of which are in agriculture. For more information on the My.Coop and its adaptation, see the Guide for Potential Users.
