Key Messages

Cooperating Out Of Poverty covers a whole range of activities that are carried out in the four corners of the globe with two main objectives: i) to sensitise stakeholders on the co-operative potential, and ii) to demonstrate the relevance of the co-operative response through concrete projects in different countries. This section provides an overview of these initiatives.

Poverty: A complex phenomenon

Eradicating poverty is clearly the biggest social challenge we face today. The poverty problem is immense, whether seen through the eyes of one poor woman struggling to feed her family, or seen through aggregate poverty statistics: of the world’s 6 billion people, 2.8 billion people –almost half- living on less than two dollars a day.

The Co-operative response

The co-operative enterprise benefits from growing interest among development partners. Co-operatives are in many countries significant social and economic actors in national economies, thus making not only personal development a reality, but contributing to the well-being of entire populations at the national level.

Women Co-operative in the quarries of Mtongani (Dar Es Salaam)

The Global Campaign and its objectives

With its interwoven values of mutual assistance, solidarity, self-management and democracy and its pursuit of economic and social objectives geared towards development of the community as a whole, the co-operative movement has tools of invaluable scope and effectiveness for improving the social, economic and cultural conditions of populations and thus for combating poverty.

Last updated: 29 April 2007