Today, we join the United Nations in celebrating the International Day of Cooperatives. Over the past 15 years, we’ve financed and trained hundreds of cooperatives throughout Latin America and Africa. We know firsthand how cooperatives around the world can serve as engines of economic development in rural communities in low- and mid-income countries. From the highlands of Peru to the savannahs of Togo, our cooperative clients provide their smallholder farmer members with stable, if not higher, prices than they could otherwise obtain, strengthening local communities and empowering farmers to adopt environmentally sustainable practices critical to long-term prosperity.
Managing cooperatives is no easy task. There are dynamic leaders at the helm of many of our most successful cooperative clients, and today we salute them and their contributions to their communities, too. Esperanza Dionisio, general manager of C.A.C. Pangoa coffee cooperative in Peru, is one such leader, as you’ll see in this short video below: