Training, built with a cooperative.
An upcoming training program designed around one cooperative’s actual gaps rather than a generic curriculum — and built so the cooperative can keep running it after we leave.
One cooperative. Its own gaps.
Most training offered to rural cooperatives arrives fully written. A curriculum built somewhere else is delivered over two days, everyone signs the attendance sheet, and very little changes in how the cooperative runs the following Monday.
We want to start the other way round. This program begins with one cooperative, a needs assessment done with its management and members, and a curriculum written against what that assessment finds — whether that is record-keeping, governance, member communication, produce handling or the digital tools sitting unused on someone’s desk.
Starting with one is deliberate. It is small enough to do properly, and honest enough to tell us whether the approach is worth repeating.
Three movements of the program.
- A.
Needs assessment
Time with management, committee members and ordinary members to find where the cooperative actually loses time, money and trust — before a single slide is written.
- B.
Curriculum co-design
A training plan written against those findings and reviewed by the cooperative, in the language and format its members will actually use.
- C.
Delivery and follow-up
Training delivered in person, then revisited — because the test of a program is what is still being practised months later, not what happened in the room.