The International Day provides a great opportunity to celebrate the co-operative difference and will be the first time since the end of the International Year of Co-operatives to share best practice and really involve the world’s one billion co-operative members. And we have lots of planning time to do this!
I’m reminded of the latest report by the International Labour Organization, featured in this month’s eDigest, called
“Resilience in a downturn: the power of financial co-operatives” the report notes that financial cooperatives have fared better than the investor-owned banks in times of crisis. Savings and credit co-operatives, co-operative banks and credit unions have grown, kept credit flowing especially to small and medium sized enterprises, and remained stable across regions of the world while (indirectly) creating employment. It is their unique combination of member ownership, control and benefit that is at the heart of their resilience and that provides a series of advantages over its competitors. With financial cooperatives presenting an astonishingly large slice of the global banking market, it is important to better understand the model.
