Foundations
What a cooperative is, how it is owned and governed, and why youth inclusion decides whether it survives.
How a cooperative is structured
Four tiers, each with its own job. A producer joins at the bottom and can be represented all the way to the top — which is what makes a small holding count for something in a negotiation.
The seven topics below cover ownership, membership, governance and the case for bringing young people in. Each is a summary of a chapter from our handbooks — a dark badge means the chapter is written and condensed here, a pale one means it is still being finalised and only the title is fixed.
1. Need for Youth Inclusion in Cooperatives
This section illustrates how the number of youths entering into the job market is rapidly increasing, yet the pace of jobs creation is significantly low. As successors of the older parents, members and staff of cooperatives facing attrition, youths remain the backbone of the economy as producers and owners of on-farm and off farm enterprises. Including them in the cooperative business development as active members, directors and staff is a fundamental initiative for creating jobs, sustaining their enterprises and ensuring continuity of cooperatives as the defender of their social economic rights and equalizer of opportunities and access to resources.
2. Cooperative Jobs
This section lists important value chains, the core advantages of cooperatives, and the required investment to support job creation. It explains the role of cooperatives in creating inclusive, quality, resilient, and sustainable jobs; the role of cooperative unions and federations; and the key performance indicators.
3. Common Interest Groups
This section presents the benefits of being a member of a cooperative and allied common interest groups, the vision and mission of a member, and potential avenues for career progression for youths. Through cooperatives, the underemployed and unemployed young men and women create jobs and compete. Cooperatives are the middle way for empowering youth members across the world to collaborate in an intensely competitive business world where access to appropriate technology and markets is for the knowledgeable, organised group enterprises doing business and creating opportunities for themselves.
4. Value Chain Network of a Cooperative
This section illustrates the cooperative society’s value chain network commencing from the Primary Producer Cooperative through the Union to the Federation and International Alliance of cooperatives. It explains Membership in the Primary Cooperative, Shareholding and Ownership, Leadership opportunities in the Primary Cooperative, representation at the Secondary Cooperative (Union), Ownership of Factories and Value Addition Facilities and Establishing a Factory Through a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV). It also presents Oversight and Governance, Leadership Opportunities, functions of the Federation, and how Leadership Benefits Fellow Producers in the cooperative network.
5. Youths in Cooperatives
The number of youths entering the job market increasingly outpaces job creation. Inclusion of young men and women in cooperative business development as active members, directors and staff sustains cooperatives as creators of jobs and other opportunities.
6. Strengthening Youth Inclusion
7. Applying Acquired Knowledge
Readers, particularly young men and women, will be able to explain that cooperatives, through self-help and mutual help, can create jobs and improve livelihoods across all sectors of the economy. This section presents questions that test the understanding of youths about the power of cooperatives under the following items: Role of Cooperatives; How to Form a Cooperative and Become a Member; Important Steps in Forming or Joining a Cooperative; How to Organize and Manage Your Primary Cooperative; The Role of Government in Growing Cooperatives; Cooperative Member Responsibility in Monitoring and Accountability.
Source: Job Creation Opportunities (Shirikiana handbook, in preparation), contents of August 2026. Summaries are published as chapters are finalised.
Ready to go deeper?
Each topic here is a summary of a chapter from our handbooks. The full text is in the books.
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.