By Kenzie Love
The CWCF Executive Director, Hazel Corcoran, was among those who attended the International Co-operative Alliance’s 2024 Global Co-operative Conference in New Delhi, India this past November. Corcoran was spurred to attend the event, which preceded the UN International Year of Co-operatives (“IYC”) taking place in 2025, after learning there would be a relatively small Canadian contingent, believing adequate Canadian representation at the Conference was important. While a packed daily agenda during the Conference, including appearing on a panel about care co-operatives, made for a busy week, Corcoran returned home feeling it was the best conference she’d ever attended.
“I think what made the event were the people who were there and the messages that they brought,” she says, “which were very inspiring at what is a challenging time for the planet, with hate, conflict, climate change, and inequality all accelerating and not having too many obvious solutions.”
As the Conference made clear, however, co-ops are a key solution to many of these crises. One speaker Corcoran found particularly compelling on this topic was Ashish Shah, Director of the Division of Country Programmes at the International Trade Centre.
“He feels that the only way forward is a kind of transformative solution that he sees in the co-op movement,” she says. “He put it so clearly, he said, ‘Co-ops are not a third way. They’re the only way. This is for greater democracy, more equality, and more shared prosperity.’”
As Shah further noted, co-ops need to get better at telling their own story in order to have this transformative impact, and this is something Corcoran hopes will happen over the coming year.
“What is clear is that we want to use the opportunity of having the International Year of Co-operatives to try to get the message out to the public everywhere in every country, and also to governments to encourage better programming, support new development of co-operatives, and then continue and deepen the discussions.”
To this end, CWCF will be devoting a day at its upcoming 2025 Conference to the International Year of Co-operatives, one of many events slated to take place in North America and overseas. Corcoran hopes these events will build on the potential of the co-operative model that the ICA Conference reaffirmed for her.
“It just made me think that a lot of us committed co-operators, we don’t always recognize the strength and power in the model we work with every day,” she says. “And yet, outsiders, such as people at the International Labour Organization,the UN and so on, these wonderful, brilliant people are looking to us and saying ‘Co-operatives are a big part of the solution. Let’s work together and make good things happen.’ As someone who’s been at this for 30 years, it’s not every day I go to an event and come back feeling way more inspired and that’s how I came back. I’m excited for this second IYC in 2025.”
Co-operative News did a comprehensive write-up on the ICA Global Conference, at this link. There is a website for the UN IYC 2025, at this link. A reflection piece from ICA President Ariel Guarco is available here, and an article on the New Delhi Action Agenda is here. Co-ops can request the use of the logo throughout the IYC, and we encourage all co-ops to do so.