When set up, cooperatives and SSE initiatives link to multiple areas of ILO work. They are key actors in value chains and stand to benefit from business development services, financial education and access to finance. They can also serve as an effective outreach body for raising the awareness and building the capacities of their members and workers regarding labour rights, including OSH and child-labour issues.

Here are some examples of how integration took place within the PROSPECTS programme regarding social enterprises and cooperatives:

• Integrating business development services with cooperatives and social and solidarity economy enterprises. This helps in terms of resources and risk-sharing, particularly for MSME owners and entrepreneurs. Cooperative formation will also increase the willingness of service providers, including commercial banks, to serve entrepreneurs who might fit into higher risk categories. 

• Linking cooperative structures to finance as a measure of sustainability. In Ethiopia, PROSPECTS established a partnership with a local commercial bank as part of the programme. Meanwhile, incorporating financial education into cooperative training to enhance members’ financial literacy played a key part in various programmes.

• Positioning cooperatives as entry points for service delivery and outreach in areas like labour rights, occupational safety and health (OSH) and social protection. For example, in Jordan, services were provided through cooperatives, including through the Agricultural Guidance and Employment Units (AGEUs).

• Cooperatives can operate as employment centres within high-performing agriculture cooperatives, offering career guidance and job-matching services that reflect the daily and seasonal characteristics of employment in the sector.

• In Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan, cooperative structures were supported as a part of value-chain development. This involved helping individual refugee and host community producers/farmers organize into collective groups where they could pool resources and production and therefore gain both bargaining power with buyers and access to markets.

• Cooperatives can be formed in the process of implementing EIIP. For example, in Kenya, cobblestone technology was introduced to install and repair roads, using an EIIP approach linked to TVET courses in cobblestone paving, maintenance and related works as part of efforts to expand vocational training in refugee-hosting areas. In the first rollout of the programme, 50 young people were trained in paving. These same trainees were also supported in forming a workers’ cooperative, so that they could collectively manage the work. In Ethiopia, 16 graduates from a technical vocational course on cobblestone paving were in the process of forming a cooperative with a view to being issued a trial contract to complete a 500-metre cobblestone road in Kebribeyah. 

• Facilitating access to finance through Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs), which provide rotating loans to cooperative members.