Capacity that outlasts the project.
Four connected strands of capacity building for cooperatives and rural enterprises — digitization, the skills to run it, entrepreneurship programs for youth and women, and the governance work that keeps a cooperative alive past its current leadership.
Systems fail on capacity, not on software.
A cooperative can be given a management system and still keep its real records in a book. A youth group can be given a grant and still have no one who can write the next proposal. The gap is rarely the tool — it is whether anyone inside the institution can run it, maintain it and hand it on.
This program is four strands of capacity work that we intend to run together rather than separately, because in practice they fail together. Digitizing a cooperative without training its staff produces an unused system. Training without addressing who holds power inside the cooperative produces skills that never get used.
The strands are in design through 2026, with delivery planned from 2027 alongside partners who already work with the cooperatives and groups involved.
Four strands, one program.
- A.
Digitization of cooperatives
Moving membership, produce, records and payment data off paper and into systems a cooperative can genuinely operate on its own.
- B.
Digitization capacity building
The training that makes the systems stick — staff, management and committee members able to use, maintain and trust what has been installed.
- C.
Youth & women’s entrepreneurship
Empowerment programs for young people and women in rural economies: business skills, market access and pathways to finance.
- D.
Inclusion, succession & sustainability
The governance work behind who gets a seat, who comes next, and what keeps a cooperative viable beyond its current leadership.