During the 2025 International Year of Cooperatives, the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) published its 2026-2030 strategic plan: Practice, Promote, Protect. On 10 February 2026, the ICA hosted the first in a series of sessions for members to explore the strategy. The event, moderated by ICA Communications Director Leire Luengo, discussed how the strategy was developed, what it contains, and how members can use it to transform the cooperative movement in their own country. The ICA website has a page dedicated to the Strategic Plan that includes the public version of the document available in English, Spanish and French. The ICA encourages its members to make it available on their websites and promote it widely.
Opening the event, ICA Director General, Jeroen Douglas, spoke about the ICA’s history, mission and vision, acknowledging that while the culture of the cooperative movement is vital, a strategy is also “a very helpful tool to guide our activities, and reflect on our ambition to promote belonging”.
The ICA has a 131-year mandate to bring the global voice of the cooperative movement together, he said, despite its vast cultural, regional and sectoral differences. “Our mission is to have unity. Mission is what we want to be, while the vision is where we want to go.”
The vision for the ICA over the next four years has three elements: the strengthening of the Statement of Cooperative Identity as adopted by the ICA General Assembly in 1995; supporting the statement via activity in five areas of intervention (advocacy, education, policy, law and communication); and promoting in particular the principle of cooperation amongst cooperatives.
“We speak about this in terms of our alpha and omega,” said Douglas. “Our beginning, our alpha, is the Statement of the Cooperative Identity. That's where it all starts. Our Omega, where we want to go, is a future where cooperation moves from an alternative to an essential, where cooperatives claim a greater share of the global economy and deliver prosperity for all.”
Cooperatives matter now, he added, because they address global challenges through local solutions. “As the world faces interconnected crises that demand new approaches, cooperatives offer proven, interconnected solutions.”
At the heart of the ICA’s strategy is the Cooperative Accelerator cycle, which, explained Douglas, “is about building awareness and membership growth that will also be interconnected to inclusive opportunities and cooperation” while enabling policy recognition and strengthening corporate networks, which will ultimately advance cooperative competitiveness.
He presented to attendees the ICA’s Theory of Change, which outlines pathways from vision to impact via a number of strategic interventions that create conditions for success. The interventions focus on people, data, advocacy, finance and the future.
“We have mapped thinking about these five strategic interventions, and these five outcome areas, showing how they are interconnected in one comprehensive theory of change,” said Douglas, “as a tool that helps to order our thought process and interventions.”
The strategy includes both short-term objectives (for 2030) and longer-term outcomes because “the vision is also trying to put dots on the horizon”. The full interactive theory of change can be explored here.
Attendees also heard from Dr Balu Iyer, Regional Director for ICA Asia - Pacific, who emphasised that the Practice, Promote, Protect Strategic Plan was not just a strategy for the ICA Global Office, but “a shared framework for the global cooperative movement”.
“We see the strategy as a living document. It's not just cast in stone, but is something which we see as a living document that guides our collective action and courageous alignment. We look forward to working together with our members, with our partners, with stakeholders, to practice the cooperative values, to promote the cooperative model and to protect the space for cooperatives to thrive and contribute meaningfully to a more inclusive, sustainable and peaceful world.”
A further five Members’ Chats are planned for 2026, which will address the five pillars of the strategic plan:
14 April: Advocacy
21 July: People
13 October: Future
10 November: Finance
15 December: Data
Registration links for all events will be shared in the weeks ahead. You can find all ICA events here.
