Last summer, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2025 as the International Year of Cooperatives, underscoring the increasingly important role cooperatives play in sustainable development across social, economic and environmental dimensions.
What are cooperatives?
In simple terms, a cooperative, or co-op, is a business or community organisation that is owned and run by the people who use it. Cooperatives are based on the idea of people working together to meet their shared needs.
Characteristically, co-ops are voluntary, democratic, equitable and self-governing, oftentimes formed by employees or community members who work together locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.
Examples of cooperatives in the UK include The Co-op group, a food retailer with other 2,500 stories nationwide which also offers funeral, insurance and legal services; The Globe, the UK's first co-op owned music venue and jazz education centre and one of the North East's only, truly independent live music bars, located in the heart of Newcastle; and another Newcastle-based co-operative, Shared Interest! We are an ethical investment co-operative owned by our members, working towards the benefit of our shared global community.
Why are cooperatives important?
Within some of the world’s most disadvantaged and marginalised communities, we have seen first-hand how cooperatives are economically empowering their members by pooling resources, delivering training, sharing ownership, strengthening bargaining power and increasing access to global markets.
We regularly observe cooperatives providing microfinance and credit facilities, encouraging local investment and improving financial stability for individuals who would otherwise have severely limited access to finance and traditional banking systems.
Beyond financial inclusion, cooperatives frequently contribute to social development with initiatives to develop local infrastructure, education, healthcare and environmental protection. What’s more, with members sharing risks and supporting one-another, the collective cooperative structure affords resilience in times of crisis.
In the face of increasing socio-political and economic uncertainty, particularly for millions of artisans and farmers across the agri-sector, cooperatives provide practical, equitable solutions for both people and the planet.
In the film below, meet farmers of Kavatchiva, one of 32 members within ECOOKIM's co-operative union. ECOOKIM are an Ivorian cocoa producer and Shared Interest customer since 2014.
Meet ECOOKIM
