How has the last year been for your sector?
With our members in the past year, we achieved a lot of great things. We successfully ended our SCC Sharing, Collaboration, Cooperation partnership and started collaboration on new programmes such as Social Economy 4Ces and CO-FRESH. We celebrated many outcomes such as reports and the final event of the international EU-ICA partnership Coops4dev, a gender equality webinar after the implementation of our Gender Equality Charter, our inputs to several EU expert groups, and the release of Coopedia, the online encyclopaedia about co-operatives.
However, the uncertainties of the Covid-19 pandemic imposed some logistical and operational constraints that hampered the very communications and exchanges that are the basis of people-centred organisations like Cooperatives Europe. Therefore, we were particularly happy to meet our members during our hybrid GA, some we hadn’t seen for more than a year. This year also confirmed the interest in the co-operative business model that considers societal objectives and what they were doing long before the outbreak of the crisis.
What are your hopes for the future?
Unfortunately, the battle against Covid-19 has not yet ended and will most likely continue to impact our way of working. In 2022 we will be working on the EU Social Economy Action Plan and the implementation of the SME strategy. The potential second ICA-EU Partnership on International Cooperative Development (Coops4Dev) will be a key topic as well as the implementation of several partnerships to implement actions promoting the co-operative idea.
Together with president Susanne Westhausen and the board, we will set out the new strategy for Cooperatives Europe in the coming years. We look upon a fruitful four years for the European co-operative community and we are hopeful that the growing interest in enterprises linking economy and sustainability will be translated into concrete actions and support for co-operatives all over Europe.
How has the last year been for your sector?
With our members in the past year, we achieved a lot of great things. We successfully ended our SCC Sharing, Collaboration, Cooperation partnership and started collaboration on new programmes such as Social Economy 4Ces and CO-FRESH. We celebrated many outcomes such as reports and the final event of the international EU-ICA partnership Coops4dev, a gender equality webinar after the implementation of our Gender Equality Charter, our inputs to several EU expert groups, and the release of Coopedia, the online encyclopaedia about co-operatives.
However, the uncertainties of the Covid-19 pandemic imposed some logistical and operational constraints that hampered the very communications and exchanges that are the basis of people-centred organisations like Cooperatives Europe. Therefore, we were particularly happy to meet our members during our hybrid GA, some we hadn’t seen for more than a year. This year also confirmed the interest in the co-operative business model that considers societal objectives and what they were doing long before the outbreak of the crisis.
What are your hopes for the future?
Unfortunately, the battle against Covid-19 has not yet ended and will most likely continue to impact our way of working. In 2022 we will be working on the EU Social Economy Action Plan and the implementation of the SME strategy. The potential second ICA-EU Partnership on International Cooperative Development (Coops4Dev) will be a key topic as well as the implementation of several partnerships to implement actions promoting the co-operative idea.
Together with president Susanne Westhausen and the board, we will set out the new strategy for Cooperatives Europe in the coming years. We look upon a fruitful four years for the European co-operative community and we are hopeful that the growing interest in enterprises linking economy and sustainability will be translated into concrete actions and support for co-operatives all over Europe.
