The Blueprint for a Cooperative Decade is the ICA’s global strategy of and for cooperatives. To achieve the 2020 Vision of the Blueprint, the Alliance pursues Blueprint programmes in five priority areas: Participation, Sustainability, Identity, Legal Frameworks and Capital.
The Blueprint aims to strengthen the cooperative model and grow the global movement. Cooperatives are a vehicle of growth and development – a business model that allows people and communities to meet their needs and aspirations. Cooperatives offer a unique answer to contemporary problems – a space where individual economic pursuits are valued, and where these economic pursuits are embedded within a holistic consideration of the world in which we live.
This document was considered in draft by the General Assembly of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) in Manchester in October 2012. Following comment and discussion - the Blueprint was approved by the General Assembly. The intention of the General Assembly was that the United Nations International Year of Cooperatives marked the beginning of a worldwide campaign to take the co-operative way of doing business to a new level. The ambitious plan in this Blueprint - the “2020 vision” - is for the cooperative form of business by 2020 to become:
• The acknowledged leader in economic, social and environmental sustainability
• The model preferred by people
• The fastest growing form of enterprise
Cooperatives around the world have adopted The Blueprint.
The English, French and Spanish versions were released in February 2013. A landmark publication of the ICA, it has been translated in 16 languages.
