The U.S. Overseas Cooperative Development Council presents a one-day opportunity to learn, explore and formulate recommendations for expanding the use of cooperatives as development tools.

Cooperatives: Meeting Development Challenges of
the 21st Century
Thursday, May 20, 2010
8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Reception to follow
Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill
400 New Jersey Avenue N.W.
Washington, D.C.

For decades, cooperatives have been used effectively to achieve economic, social and democratic objectives in international development. Cooperatives are member-owned institutions that have helped millions of people worldwide escape poverty and provided goods and services often not available to disadvantaged populations. However, the success of cooperatives has not always been widely recognized or fully understood. This is why OCDC is bringing together policymakers, cooperative development practitioners and donor agency leaders to learn, discuss and plan for positioning cooperatives to meet development challenges of the 21st Century.

The conference features:

  • keynote presentations from foreign policy experts;
  • practical experiences from overseas cooperative leaders;
  • panel presentations on a variety of cooperative development topics; and
  • discussion sessions on critical issues affecting the use of cooperatives as development tools.
“Cooperatives are powerful tools for delivering foreign assistance. They’ve demonstrated their success:  worldwide, more than 800 million people are cooperative members, and cooperatives employ 100 million more.” —Rob Nooter, OCDC Executive Director