The Joint-conference of the International Cooperative Alliance Committee on Cooperative Research (ICA CCR), the Association of Cooperatives Educators (ACE) and the Canadian Association for Studies in Cooperation (CASC) was held in Montreal from May 27 to 30. The ICA Director General Bruno Roelants took the floor on May 28.
Delivering a keynote speech at the Joint-conference, Mr. Roelants stressed the importance of cooperative research which had been also mentioned in the ICA member survey on strategic proposals. He also presented the cooperative entrepreneurship, in terms of collective entrepreneurship, decentralizing economy and sustainability.
In a room full of cooperators and researchers from the more than over a dozen different countries, ICA Director-General urged professionals for more research on the measurement of impact and contribution of cooperatives.
Hyungsik Eum, ICA's Strategy and Statistics Coordinator shared his work on "Classification of cooperatives" which was made together with Marie J. Bouchard, chair of the Committee for the Promotion and Advancement of Cooperatives (COPAC), a technical working group on cooperative statistics, and Chiara Carini, researcher at European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises (Eurisce).
The youth was not forgotten as Arielle Romenteau, Cooperatives Europe Research Coordinator, and Jeffrey Moxom, ICA Research Officer, shared preliminary insights of the ongoing ICA-EU partnership (#coops4dev) Global Thematic Research on cooperatives and youth, conducted jointly with all ICA offices, which looks at major challenges facing young people and ways in which cooperatives can help address them.
During 4 days of conference, together with 37 plenary and parallel sessions, there were one-day seminar for young researchers, annual general assemblies of ACE and CASC, a banquet with tribute to Jack Quarter, ACE Awards and CASC Merit Award and a tour programme for visiting cooperatives in Montreal.
