The Gujarat Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) Cooperative Federation, the All India Federation of SEWA (SEWA Bharat) and the International Cooperative Alliance Asia and Pacific Regional Office (ICA-AP) have delivered a capacity building workshop aimed at developing grassroots women’s cooperatives in Ahmedabad, India. The ILO’s Cooperatives Unit Manager and the ILO Enterprises Specialist from New Delhi Office also participated in the workshop. More

ILO COOP and Streetnet International representatives conducted a joint mission to Moldova to consult with the ILO constituents and partners to identify the needs and opportunities of street vendors and market vendors toward cooperatives and other social and solidarity economy organizations in Moldova. More

“Spotlight Interviews with Co-operators” is a series of interviews with co-operators from around the world with whom ILO officials have crossed paths during the course of their work on cooperatives and the wider SSE. On this occasion, ILO interviewed Ms. Rihem Bchini, President of GDA Pure Nature – an agricultural cooperative of rural women workers established in 2018 in Tunisia with the support of the ILO’s Promotion of Organizations and Mechanisms of Social and Solidarity Economy (PROMESS) project. More

The interview with Ms Oksana Abboud, International Coordinator at StreetNet International is now available in French, Spanish, Russian, and Romanian, in addition to English.

What role for cooperatives and other SSE organizations in formalizing the work of waste pickers in recycling value chains? How can the conditions of their work be improved in partnership with key stakeholders across the chain toward decent work? This brief highlights lessons learned from experiences of waste pickers' cooperatives and other SSE organizations in India, Colombia, Brazil, Morocco, South Africa and more. More

For the 3^rd edition of the Global Knowledge Sharing Forum on Transition to formal economy that will take place at ITC-ILO in Turin from 25-29 November 2019, the ILO is launching a call for papers “Writing on informality” on evidence-based policies on formalization to encourage good quality publications on the way out of informality. The deadline for full paper submission is 20 September 2019. More

The journal Review of Applied Socio-Economic Research (REASER) launched a call for papers for its special issue on SSE and local sustainable development, as a follow up to the 7^th CIRIEC International Research Conference organized in Bucharest. The submission deadline is 10 September 2019. More

Co-operatives UK, the national network of thousands of cooperative businesses, released the ‘Co-op Economy 2019’ report. It reveals that the UK's 7,215 cooperatives have a combined turnover of £37.7 billion, up more than £400 million on 2018 levels. They employ 233,733 people and have 13.7 million members. The report notes that the cooperative model remains resilient, with almost three out of four cooperative start-ups (72%) still flourishing after the difficult first five years of existence compared to 43% of companies. More