THE ICA’S ROLE IN DEVELOPMENT:
CONNECTING PEOPLE AND IDEAS

The role of the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) in development is to promote and strengthen co-operatives through the exchange of information and co-ordination of people and organisations. ICA is well positioned to assist organisations in creating an enabling environment for sustainable co-operative development and the fight against poverty.

Acting as a network, coordinator and catalyst of co-operative development, the ICA works through its regional offices in Africa (Kenya), the Americas (Costa Rica), Asia-Pacific (India), and Europe (Belgium). The ICA also provides services through project offices. The central office in Geneva has a co-ordinating function in this work.

The ICA is strategically placed to assist in development through:

Advocacy: The ICA represents members, articulates their needs and concerns, and functions as a facilitator and catalyst for co-operative development. The ICA also supports co-operative policies and legislation reforms at the national level; advocates for the positive role and contribution of co-operative movements as actors and partners in the development challenges, policies and programmes; and lobbies vis-à-vis governments. See further information >>>

Linking Donors & Organisations: The ICA helps develop partnerships amongst co-operatives, donor organisations and development organisations. It organises joint approaches to multilateral and bilateral donors such as the UN system, World Bank, regional development banks and the European Union. The ICA also creates access to government policy makers through regular regional consultations. Itcomplements and supplements the work of its partners in the field and add value to their development programmes. ICA helps link co-operatives together so they can learn from each other.

Developing partnerships through the Co-operating Out of Poverty Campaign: The International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the ICA have joined forces to enable poor people to co-operate out of poverty through a Global Co-operative Campaign Against Poverty. The campaign is a call to action to the world co-operative movement to join hands in fighting poverty. It aims to strengthen the capacity of co-operatives to make a significant contribution to poverty reduction by increasing their role in achieving the Millennium Development Goals particularly with regard to reducing poverty by half by the year 2015.

Strengthening knowledge base: The ICA builds up a knowledge base to get co-operatives onto the development agenda. We produce, collect and disseminate statistics and information on best practices in co-operative development to member organisations and other stakeholders. The ICA can help co-operatives and development organisations through its information, publications and documents concerning co-operative development.

The Developing 300 Project showcases the importance of co-operatives in developing economies, ranking the largest co-operatives in a number of developing countries. Initially, 30 developing economies have been surveyed - 8 countries from the Americas region, 10 countries from Asia and 12 from Africa. The aim is to collect data on the 20 biggest co-operatives in each country.

Capacity building: The ICA coordinates and supports member organisations to develop, test and promote the utilisation of appropriate services, methods, systems and software for development. We train the human resources in order to bring about a sustainable improvement of their capacities and performance in terms of management, organisation development, trade and information.

The ICA also facilitates networking and capacity building of member organisations through inter co-operative staff and elected leader exchanges. We also provide a service delivery to members that will strengthen their development as businesses.