Cooperation and Innovation for Good Practices: Strategic Partnership for Adult Education (Erasmus Plus)

In Turkey there is a significant difference in development and living conditions between urban and rural ares. Cooperatives in rural areas are considered to promote the economy and improve the living conditions in rural areas. However, cooperatives in Turkey still need to develop in order to be sustainable and effective. The Turkisch cooperative sector is hallmarked by a lack of social capital and the culture of working together as well as by inadequacies of digital and e-commerce skills especially for people in rural areas. Specific training approaches for disadvantaged groups like people in rural areas, women and unemployed people are limited or inadequate and ineffective due to a limited number of qualified trainers as well as legal, bureaucratic and financial issue. The project therefore aims at strengthening the Turkish cooperative sector by improving its training measures and education of its people. Specific objectives of the project are developing a new cooperative training programme through innovation (especially in the areas of e-commerce, marketing, branding and promotion as well as communication and working together), strengthening the capacity of stakeholders  and trainers in trainings for cooperatives, increasing number and participants of cooperative trainings as well as increasing the skills and competencies of cooperative administrators/members  and dissemination of best practices.