Significant steps taken in the establishment of a Women’s Cooperative in Gaziantep

Capacity building training was delivered in the context of establishing a Women’s Cooperative aimed under the project “Strengthening the Resilience of Syrian Women and Girls” being implemented in Gaziantep jointly by UN Women, ILO and ASAM.
The training held on 12-15 March at GESOB Seminar Hall with support from the Foundation for the Support of Women’s Work (KEDV) drew a participation of 49 beneficiaries in total, who would assume roles in establishing the cooperative, including 37 Syrians, 11 Turks, and 1 Afghan from the workshops on shoe-upping, textiles and packaging, as well as participants of the training courses on Turkish language, computer operating, basic make-up and hair-dressing. Including participants from the Tomorrow's Women Committee, the training proceeded in interactive methods to impart knowledge on procedures for establishing women’s cooperatives, cooperative principles and areas of production, and make joint decisions. On the last day of the training, the title of the cooperative was decided as “SADA Women’s Cooperative” by the motions and votes of participants.
On the first day of the four-day training, group work was held to discuss, assuming the women’s cooperative was established, what the cooperative would have produced by the end of its second year, how it marketed its product etc. relating to the likely stage that the establishment efforts would have reached. Information was provided on the formal procedures to follow and documents to prepare for establishing the cooperative, and answers were sought to the question of what business model should be developed.
The second day of the training started with seeking thematic answers to the question “what is a cooperative?” Through the interactive work, the participating women responded with such statements that “women get together to work and produce; not be one but be together; be a union; women make their own production; women take their own decisions; diverse groups come together; bring diverse products together under one roof; become partners; mutual assistance and sharing.” Arriving at a common definition of the cooperative, women defined it as an independent entity which brought together women with common needs and demands, which was managed and controlled by the women themselves. The second part of the second day included the provision of information on the criteria that must be met by the founders, and on the articles of incorporation and cooperative principles. The framework for fundamental principles of the women’s cooperative was drawn up by the participants as follows: The women’s cooperative should be independent; command trust; be based on equality among partners; involve no discrimination on the grounds of language, religion or race and respect all; have an atmosphere where everyone listens to others, tolerance prevails; share the gains as well as the losses; involve joint action, not sole action; have collective leadership; have no personal disputes reflected onto the cooperative; and be a solidarity partnership with transparency, loyalty, commitment to goals and principles, accountable.
On the third day of the training, group work was held on the operation of the cooperative, bodies, management, supervision, eligibility for being a partner, rights and obligations of partners, revenues and expenses of the cooperative, revenue sharing, formal obligations, and examples of business plans.
On the last day of the training, proposals for the name were solicited from the participants, and 32 out of 43 participants voted that the cooperative’s titled be “SADA Women’s Cooperative”. As for the logo, it was decided that the samples of logo suggested by the beneficiaries of the packaging workshop be put to vote of all women beneficiaries of SADA Women’s Centre. The core areas of production of the cooperative were identified as shoe-upping, packaging, textiles and kitchen workshops.