Video Courtesy: Cooperative Network.
What is a Cooperative?
A cooperative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise.
Cooperatives are based on the values of self help, self responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity . In the tradition of their founders, cooperative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.
Promoting Cooperative Identity through
Digital Transformation
ICA-AP in collaboration with the ICA EU Partnership is organising a virtual Coopathon 3.0 to source sustainable, innovative, and technologically enabled solutions to address the challenges in the social and service sectors posed by COVID 19 pandemic, which are in line with cooperative values and principles.
The pandemic has adversely affected services sector leading to closures, layoffs, and unemployment due to mobility restrictions and social distancing measures imposed for public health reasons. It also highlighted the glaring disparities among the socio economic and demographic spectrum.
As people centred businesses, cooperatives have shown the support and solidarity for their members and communities in this crisis. Coopathon 3.0 is an initiative to provide a platform to solve some of the pressing problems we face in this time of crisis, inculcate a culture of innovation and problem solving, and in the process, expose participants to the values based cooperative model.
This is a virtual event. Teams will work together throughout the 72-hour coopathon using tools such as Airmeet, Slack, Google applications, etc.
We are seeking a diverse group of participants; aged 13 and above and of all experience levels, professional and academic backgrounds, and skill sets are welcome; what matters most is your commitment to making an impact and your willingness to collaborate.
You are advised to go through the website and submit the completed registration form before the deadline. If you are applying with a team, members must submit only one application.
We are looking at a team size of 2 – 5 members. However, if you do not have a team yet, we would encourage you to apply individually.
Coopathon 3.0 is focused on solving some of the most pressing problems that are especially resulting from the COVID-19 crisis. Participants are encouraged to come with these problems in mind and will work with teams to develop solutions that will have a meaningful impact on the COVID-19 crisis.
The top three winning teams will receive a cash prize and other benefits such as organisatonal support, computing resources and direct access to key partners to further develop, validate, and implement the solutions developed.
First prize – USD 3000, Second prize- USD 2000 and Third prize – USD 1500.
The products and solutions developed in this event maybe be open sourced if the participants consent to the same.
Feel free to email us at contact@coopathon.coop if you have any questions or concerns!
WE thank IFFCO for sponsoring the first and second prizes, and the ICA Domus Trust for sponsoring the third prize.
The ICA is an independent, non governmental organisation established in 1895 to unite, represent and serve co operatives worldwide. It provides a global voice and forum for knowledge, expertise and coordinated action for and about co operatives. Its members are international and national co operative organisations from all sectors of the economy, including agriculture, banking, consumer, fisheries, health, housing, insurance, and industry & services. It helps members develop business relationships and partnerships with members as well as convenes co operative knowledge, information and guidance through capacity building programmes , technical exchange, and increasing access to co operatives related information. The ICA Asia and Pacific (ICA AP) was established in 1960 in New Delhi as the regional office and education centre . The ICA AP serves 108 organizations from 32 countries (as of Oct 2020) in the region. In March 2016, the ICA entered a partnership with the European Commission, ushering in a new phase of collaboration on strengthening the co operative movement as development actors. The ICA-EU partnership is built around activities focused on increasing visibility, enhancing advocacy, sharing capacity building, strengthening co operative development networking, and supporting all these with evidence from exhaustive research. Click here to read more.