Background

Pro-active attitudes for the strengthening of cooperatives

The National Cooperative Learning Service (Sescoop) was created by Provisional Measure Nº 1.715, of September 3, 1998. As a result, after years of contributing to the government for their upkeep, cooperatives began being benefited by the services provided by the national Senai, Sesc, Sesi, Senac, Senat, Sest, Sebrae and Senar institutions. The results were felt immediately. The organizational distance that existed between cooperatives throughout the country started to disappear as they started organizing on the state level. As of 2002, Sescoop, using its revenues, began investing further in capacity-building programs for cooperatives.

The number of professionals trained by Sescoop increased from 81 thousand in December, 2000, to more than 1 million by the end of 2007. The entity thus became the main promoter of self-management, professional training, control and social promotion for cooperatives. These actions have contributed significantly to the sustainable development of cooperatives.

Sescoop has also contributed towards the improvement of standards of living, made evident by the fact that the Human Development Index (HDI) – created to measure a country's level of development, based on income, education, and longevity indicators – of those municipalities where cooperatives are present is always higher than of municipalities where there are no cooperatives. One of the explanations is the social nature of these enterprises, since they do not aim at profit, thus allowing funds to be reverted to the development of the economy and the local population.