There is no future without youth. The International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) knows it and is getting ready for a vibrant youth-focused 2019 calendar.
If you are a young entrepreneur or a professional eager to make a difference in the cooperative movement, you will be happy to know that the ICA Board recently approved at the 2018 ICA General Assembly in Buenos Aires the Global Youth Forum – Cooperative Entrepreneurship, that will take place in July 2019 in Sri Lanka.
The event is organised by the ICA with the support of the ICA-EU partnership (#coops4dev) and its global and regionals youth networks. It offers a perfect space to bring together both concrete experiences on how to start a cooperative business or working in cooperatives and also new ideas on how to better adapt cooperatives to the current changing times.
Aside from providing a forum for discussion, the Global Youth Forum will offer a range of pieces of training to strengthen professional skills to participants, increase knowledge about the cooperative model and improve the building of partnerships with other cooperatives, Civil Society Organisations or international institutions. Participants will finish the forum with a more solid and complete set of tools to both forge their own projects and positively impact the cooperative movement with their innovative and collective approach.
A perfect occasion to start warming up ahead of the Global Youth Forum – Cooperative Entrepreneurship, was the Global Youth Forum-Cooperative Entrepreneurship workshop that took place on the 25 October in Buenos Aires in the context of the V Summit of the Cooperatives of the Americas. In the sessions conforming the workshop, young cooperators identified the main challenges and possible methods and resources to tackle them. Participants in the workshop also put on the table some inspiring ideas that will potentially shape the Global Youth Forum in July 2019.
The Global Youth Forum – Cooperative Entrepreneurship is having the funding support of the ICA - EU partnership (#coops4dev), the International Summit of Cooperatives, which has given $250,000 over 5 years to finance #coopyouth activities, and the Federation National de Caisses d'Epargne in France, which has donated 15,000 euros.
We will keep you posted on the coming news with regards this thrilling event!
