The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) has created a Global Working Group on Cooperative Cultural Heritage (CCH-WG) as part of its efforts to identify and make known the various cooperative sites, traditions and practices around the world - to evidence the movement’s diversity and expanse.
It bears worthy recall that the very idea and practice of organising shared interests was inscribed in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2016. The German Friedrich-Wilhelm-Raiffeisen (FWR) Society has gifted to the International Cooperative Alliance the official copy of the original inscription of the Idea and Practice of Organizing Shared Interests into Cooperatives, which is featured on the UNESCO List of the intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Established following an ICA Board meeting on 26 September 2025, the group is currently working to identify significant cooperative sites at the national and regional levels, enhance awareness about them and their pioneers among and beyond the ICA, promote their recognition by international organisations like UNESCO, raise awareness of cooperatives’ role in building sustainable and inclusive communities, and establish a new workstream, including international standards owned and managed by the ICA, that is focused on historic cooperative sites within the ICA.
Chaired by ICA Director General Jeroen Douglas, CCH-WG under the mentorship of the Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives (OCB), the WG includes subject matter experts and cooperators driven in this regard from all the ICA Regions and a technical team from the ICA office and the OCB
This initiative is especially important given the ICA’s mission to serve the global cooperative movement and the designation of 2025 as the UN International Year of Cooperatives.
The group is expected to deliver three main outcomes in 2025:
- A digital map highlighting 25 undisputed geographical sites significant to Cooperative Cultural Heritage;
- A set of standards to guide the selection of future CCH sites;
- A global communication campaign to publicly launch the group’s work and programme for the future.
The CCH-WG will focus on learning more about key cooperative sites worldwide, promoting them within the cooperative movement and beyond, showcasing the high standards they represent, and fostering learning exchanges and partnerships between them.
Those wishing to have cooperative sites featured on the map can contact Santosh Kumar, CCH-WG Coordinator at the ICA Global Office, via email at kumar@ica.coop by 31 May 2025.
The map will be launched later this year in celebration of IYC2025.
The CCH-WG members are:
Mr Marcio Lopes de Freitas (Mentor of ICA-CCH WG)
President, Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives, Brazil
Ms Aicha Errifaai
Director General, Office of Cooperation Development, Morocco
Dr Andreas Wieg
Head of Department, DGRV - Deutscher Genossenschafts- und Raiffeisenverband e.V., Germany
Ms Ebun Akin-Falaiye
Executive Secretary, Cooperative Federation of Nigeria
Mr Rohit Gupta
Deputy Managing Director, National Cooperative Development Corporation, India
Mr Osamu Nakano
Secretary General, Japan Workers’ Cooperative Union, Japan
Ms Liz McIvor
Manager and Lead, The Co-operative Heritage Trust, United Kingdom
Mr Tiago Luiz Schmidt
President, Sicredi Pioneira, Brazil
Mr Erbin Crowell
Board of Directors of DotCoop & NCBA CLUSA, and Executive Director, NFCA, United States of America
Mr Jeroen Douglas
(Ex-officio) Director General, International Cooperative Alliance
CCH-WG Technical Team
Ms Fabíola da Silva Nader Motta
General Manager, Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives, Brazil
Mr João Pinheiro Valadares Penna
Coordinator of International Relations, Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives, Brazil
Mr Santosh Kumar
Director of Legislation, International Cooperative Alliance
