After almost 3 years of hard work, the website www.agriculture-my.coop was launched in the International Year of Cooperatives, along with four training modules on building and managing cooperatives (My.COOP), for trainers and managers and staff of cooperatives. The package also includes a training manual for trainers and a toolkit for mobile phones, especially for farmer cooperatives who have little or no access to the internet, but who do have a mobile phone.

My.COOP was developed by Agriterra, together with the ILO, KIT, WUR/CDI and several other parties. Cooperatives all over the world can use the materials free of charge. The official launch of My.Coop took place in Turin on 26 and 27 January, in the presence of the partners and other interested organisations, such as FAO and the World Food Programme. The ideas for My.COOP go back to the seventies and eighties, when the ILO developed the ‘MATCOM’ materials, training modules for cooperatives’ managers and leaders. The modules were used intensively, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America. After 30 or 40 years, the material needed revision. The ILO, which has long experience with training cooperatives, found new partners in Agriterra, which provides advice and support to cooperatives and farmer organisations worldwide and WUR and KIT, which generate knowledge on cooperatives. This joint effort has produced a new training product for cooperatives that responds to their day-to-day needs and is based on the use of modern communication tools.

The materials are free of charge and available to anyone at www.agriculture-my.coop. Cooperatives all over the world can make use of them. Trainers-to-be can follow an online distance learning course and be awarded a My.COOP trainer certificate, allowing them to guide cooperatives through the material. Agriterra will use the materials to further strengthen its partner cooperatives. If you want to become a trainer or receive more information, please contact Marly Boonman, manager of the AgriPool (boonman@agriterra.org). Together with Agriterra’s network of cooperatives, we can develop the training modules further and adapt them to the specific situation and country of each cooperative. Our goal is to improve the content of the modules and guarantee that they contribute to the sustainability of farmer cooperatives all over the world.