Cooperating Out of Poverty

With almost half of the world's population living on less than 2 dollars a day and 535 million working women and men surviving on 1 dollar a day or less, the need to reach out to the poorest of the poor is still imperative.

The International Labour Organisation and the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) have joined forces to enable poor people to co-operate out of poverty through a Global Co-operative Campaign Against Poverty. Co-operating Out of Poverty 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.

Summary of the Global Co-operative Campaign Against Poverty (pdf)

"The present crisis and the widespread awareness that the economy cannot be divorced from ethics, offers co-operation new opportunities for growth and a role, together with a growing responsibility, in confirming a new development model"

Ivano Barberini
December, 2008