Learn
The research and practical guidance behind our work, published as it is written. Thirty topics across five areas, drawn from our handbooks on values-based cooperatives.
The Six Areas
Foundations
How a cooperative is owned, governed and joined — and why youth inclusion decides whether it survives.
Sectors and Value Chains
Where the jobs are, traced from production through processing to the consumer.
Running a Cooperative
Planning, control, monitoring and evaluation — what happens after the decision.
Institutions and Ecosystem
Universities, TVET centres, faith institutions and county government.
Cooperative AI supported
group owns and uses an AI tool together — the way a cooperative already owns a mill, a tractor or…
We teach for the work, not for the certificate
A certificate that leads nowhere helps no one. Our training is built backwards from the work: what a young person will actually do on the first paid job, and what they need in order to hold their own once they are doing it.
This is also why we teach through schools and colleges that already teach. They know how to run a classroom. We design the programme, bring the partners, and stay once the course has ended.
Learning by doing
Participants work on real tasks from the first day — a real product, a real customer, real money. Theory comes in where it is needed to solve the task in front of them, not months ahead of it.
Ethics is part of the trade
Honest weighing and pricing, records that survive scrutiny, fair dealing with a fellow member: we teach these as craft, not as an appendix. A business built on shortcuts collapses at the first dispute.
Support does not end at the certificate
When the training finishes, the participant enters the network as a member, not as a former student. Work too large for one person is passed on within the network, and the consortium stands behind them as the professional body.
The Handbooks
Everything in this section comes from our handbooks on values-based cooperatives. The Power of Values-Based Cooperatives for Workers is published, ISBN 978-9914-743-17-3, by Amb. Bramwel W. Kisuya, and more than 400 copies are already in circulation. Youth Inclusion Strategies for Cooperatives is available alongside it.
A third handbook, Job Creation Opportunities, is in preparation. The summaries in this section are drawn from it as the chapters are finalised.
Test what you know
Eighteen questions on the role of cooperatives, how to form one, value chain nodes, special purpose vehicles and career paths — the ground both handbooks cover.
Glossary
Special purpose vehicles, primary and secondary cooperatives, common interest groups, HACCP, SCADA — the vocabulary used across this section, defined in one place. The full glossary is in the handbook; a selection of key terms is published here.
Universities and TVET Centres
Why training institutions are the natural partners for cooperative development — and how a college, a cooperative and a county fit together in practice.
Practical AI Skills
What artificial intelligence can realistically do for a young person, a cooperative or a small business — and, just as important, what it will not do for you.
Practical AI Skills
Seven pages written for particular situations rather than for everyone at once. Start with the overview, or go straight to the one that matches where you are.
What artificial intelligence can realistically do — and what it will not do for you.
Which models actually exist, what each one is built for, and which you can run on your own hardware.
The small, dull tasks it can take off your hands, and how to tell when it is guessing.
Using it as a patient tutor when you are teaching yourself, and where a teacher is still needed.
Paid work a student can take on with a phone — and what is not worth your time.
For employees: doing your job better without putting your employer or yourself at risk.
Where automation pays for itself in a small business, and where it quietly costs more.
Why a cooperative can own the tool rather than rent it — and what that means for member data.
Shirikiana —> to work with one another. The founding values of the cooperative movement, self-help, self-responsibility and solidarity, remain the most practical basis for collective enterprise. We join knowledge, applied action and ethical responsibility in member-owned, member-governed enterprise, guided by the International Cooperative Alliance’s principle of concern for community. We proceed incrementally, attribute every partner by name, and distinguish demonstrated capacity from stated intent.