ACDI/VOCA spreads co-op model worldwide
“The future belongs to the organized.”
motto of the National
Smallholder Farmers
Association of Malawi
nonprofit arm of the
U.S. cooperative community,
ACDI/VOCA works
overseas to foster broadbased
economic development
and vigorous civil society. It assists
developing and transitional countries in:
enterprise development and trade; food
and agricultural systems; financial systems
and crisis recovery.
In the early 1960s Congress sought
to reprise overseas the role co-ops had
played in developing rural America.
Thus, landmark foreign aid legislation
welcomed member-owned and democratically
run business and financial
organizations as partners in America’s
international assistance efforts, and
ACDI/VOCA was born. Today, the
U.S. government funds most of the
organization’s activities.
ACDI/VOCA is a bridge between
the advantages and expertise of
America’s cooperatives and pressing
needs abroad. Sometimes the
link is person-to-person:
approximately 500 U.S. volunteers
serve in two- or threeweek
assignments each year to
provide technical and management
assistance.
Improving the well-being of
people overseas is a win-win
proposition since increased
income abroad fuels U.S.
exports. And developing
nations, where populations are
burgeoning, are this country’s
growth markets of the future.
ACDI/VOCA, using U.S.
farm credit volunteers, helped
privatize 400 cooperative
banks in Poland. It spearheaded
spearheaded
a U.S. co-op community project to
set up India’s largest fertilizer company
as a cooperative.
Today ACDI/VOCA carries the
co-op banner in Paraguay, Brazil,
Mozambique, South Africa, Tajikistan
and 30 other countries with a program
that approaches $100 million in
value. Even where its work is not
strictly co-op related, it always
manifests the principle of people
organizing for their own
self-improvement.
Last year Andrew Natsios,
administrator of the U.S.
Agency for International
Development, affirmed that
approach and called
ACDI/VOCA “the premier
agricultural development NGO
[nongovernmental organization]
in the world.”
The economic efficiency
and organizational impetus of
cooperatives are especially
valuable in countries that are
struggling. As Norway’s
Minister of International
Development, Hilde Johnson,
said, “For the poor around the
world, cooperatives can provide
a much-needed opportunity
for self-determination and
empowerment.”
By pooling resources and
will, cooperative members position
themselves to obtain services,
negotiate preferred terms
in the marketplace and exercise
political clout. Co-ops represent
the grassroots and they
balance corporate power, which
are both welcome roles given
globalization’s inequities. Coops
are founded and shaped by healthy
democratic principles, which they, in
turn, foster.
ACDI/VOCA builds cooperatives
based on sound business practices so
that producers and marketers can
move into the market, achieve
economies of scale and capture more
of their goods’ value.
Crisis? Call on co-ops
As U.S. foreign assistance focuses
increasingly on helping countries avoid
or recover from crisis, ACDI/VOCA’s
co-op development work is doubly
important.
Cooperation helps knit together
torn societies. From Ethiopia, where
agricultural co-ops assisted smallholders
to recover from war and repressive
government and ultimately sell highquality
coffee to Starbucks, to Iraq
where nation-building and economic
progress depend on communities organizing
for self-benefit, ACDI/VOCA
helps people under stress overcome
crisis, win freedoms and reach for
prosperity.
In fractional Serbia, 49 collectives
have been assisted by ACDI/VOCA
since 2001 to create unity, stability and
economic progress. Staffer Gene Neill
says: “We provide lasting solutions by
establishing functioning, memberowned,
democratic units that serve all
members in the area to achieve a common
goal whether it is livestock
improvement, agricultural marketing,
providing machinery to increase production,
etc. Each of these projects has
a sustainability element often
lacking in pre-crisis cooperatives
funded by the state. In
addition, we are encouraging
cooperation among producers
to increase their incomes and
provide better lifestyles for
themselves and their families.”
ACDI/VOCA’s cooperatives
enlist hard-to-reach rural
people in the fight of their
lives against HIV/AIDS. Food
security and economic sustainability
often depend on the
productivity of smallholder
farmers, and HIV/AIDS can
in one generation turn food
surplus into shortage. As rural
livelihoods are undermined,
social disintegration is the
result.
In Ethiopia, where infection
rates range up to 50 percent,
ACDI/VOCA is helping
400 co-ops, with a total family
member population of 2.5
million, develop HIV/AIDS
educational materials, sell
condoms in cooperative shops,
host frank trainings and use
music and drama to powerfully
convey health messages.
ACDI/VOCA’s activities
revolve around helping farmers
and entrepreneurs overseas
participate in the global economy.
But ACDI/VOCA’s cooperative
and association partners show their
true colors in also rising to meet
members’ social, political and even
health needs.
Contact information: website:
See www.acdivoca.org; phone:
(202) 879-0269; address: 50 F St.
NW, Suite 1100, Washington, D.C.,
20001. ACDI/VOCA is affiliated
with the National Council of Farmer
Cooperatives and the Farm Credit
Council. Interim President: Don
Crane; Board Chair: Jean Marie
Peltier.
