Co-operative leaders must remain focused on developing, advancing, and protecting co-operatives. We must help more people use co-operatives to build a more inclusive economy.
To ensure we serve the co-op community this year, we need to ask ourselves what it means to be a co-operative in 2024. As always, it means being an entity that adjusts and evolves to local, national and international conditions. In 2024, this means facing not only fiercely competitive market environments; it also means operating in a world confronting the generational challenges of climate change, deep inequality, tragic military conflict and a technology revolution.
These dynamics require co-operative leaders to be every bit as nimble and innovative as their non-co-op competition. But that does not mean that they need to act like non-co-ops. In fact, given our distinctive business model, it means that co-op leaders have an opportunity to lean into their co-operative identity to survive and thrive.
Our shared values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity should inform how co-operatives navigate both the business and civic environments. For co-ops to thrive, they will need to advocate for a policy environment that supports co-operatives; they will need to be in a posture of continual learning; and they will need to embody the 6th Co-operative Principle of “cooperation among co-operatives.”
As the 2019 International Co-operative Alliance Declaration on Positive Peace through Co-operatives states:
“The co-operative movement, with its co-operatives, cooperators, support and representative organizations, beyond creeds and political traditions, has sustained since its origins its commitment to positive peace, as the goal and means to build a society founded on the values of democracy, equality, solidarity, participation and concern for the community. Conflicts derive from unmet human needs and aspirations, whereas co-operatives have the mission to respond to human needs and aspirations, including aspirations for a better future, more inclusive, more sustainable, more participative and more prosperous for all.”
By creating jobs and wealth that are rooted in the community, co-operatives are a preferred strategy for building positive peace. They can also be used to meet social needs such as affordable housing and healthcare, and they are incubators for teaching how to build democratic institutions through peaceful means.
As we navigate a new year, let’s recognize how co-operatives can help build a better world by creating economic opportunity, bolstering democratic institutions, and building positive peace.
—Doug O’Brien is the president and CEO of NCBA CLUSA.
