The project

‘Cooperatives in development' was a project led by Cooperatives Europe and co-financed by the European Commission under the Non-State Actors (NSA) grant scheme. This initiative, which started in September 2012 and ended in September 2015 built upon the activities of the Cooperatives Europe Development Platform (CEDP), aimed at fostering exchanges within the global cooperative network for an impact-driven, coordinated, and sustainable cooperative development approach.

CEDP members seek to enhance dialogue with the EU institutions, providing decision-makers with input and data from grass-roots cooperatives so as to support coherent EU policy-making and strategic planning, and advocating for greater visibility of cooperatives within EU policies, and they meet every 4 months to share good practices and plan common activities for the strengthening of the cooperative development network. 

The success of the project has been the catalyser for the new ICA-EU partnership on co-operative development, which started in March 2016. In the same lines of the CEDP, the Global Co-operative Development Platform (GCDP), launched in October 2016 during the International Summit of Co-operatives, represents an effort from global co-operative actors involved in development, to exchange knowledge, strengthen networks and raise visibility and knowledge about the role co-operatives play in international development. Within the GCDP, the CEDP represents the expertise of Cooperatives Europe in international development.

Cooperatives are an effective tool in international development since they are run by and for local people, developing, and passing on, the business expertise. Profits generated stay local, and are invested in the cooperative, the local area or distributed to the local owners.