Kofi McMil­lan

Re­search As­sis­tant

El­ma Fran­cois In­sti­tute

As the cur­tains closed on the Na­tion­al Co-Op­er­a­tive Con­fer­ence 2025 and a con­fer­ence de­c­la­ra­tion was ad­vanced, there were sev­er­al per­va­sive feel­ings that en­com­passed me. They were main­ly those of ful­fil­ment and en­rich­ment.

From the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on No­vem­ber 12, 2025, to the very last ses­sion, the con­fer­ence not on­ly rein­vig­o­rat­ed the co-op­er­a­tive move­ment but al­so high­light­ed the mul­ti­fac­eted ways in which co-op­er­a­tives can mean­ing­ful­ly con­tribute to the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment tra­jec­to­ry.

The con­fer­ence, spear­head­ed by the Co-Op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union Move­ment-Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee (CCUM-TC) and held at the CCLCS cam­pus in Val­sayn, with the theme “Cel­e­brat­ing Co-op­er­a­tive Re­silience and Repo­si­tion­ing the Co-Op­er­a­tive Move­ment as a Strate­gic Dri­ver in Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment,” brought to­geth­er a rich ta­pes­try of sea­soned and eru­dite con­trib­u­tors, rang­ing from prac­ti­tion­ers, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, youth lead­ers and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts, with the aim of dri­ving trans­for­ma­tive change and repo­si­tion­ing the move­ment as an in­dis­pens­able cog in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment frame­works and dis­cus­sions.

The host­ing of this con­fer­ence came at a crit­i­cal junc­ture, in a year where the Unit­ed Na­tions pro­claimed 2025 “In­ter­na­tion­al Year of Co-Op­er­a­tives,” un­der­gird­ed by the theme“Co-Op­er­a­tives Build a Bet­ter World,” which aims to high­light the in­te­gral role of co-op­er­a­tives in fos­ter­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and ad­dress­ing glob­al chal­lenges.

More­over, the con­fer­ence tran­spired against a con­vo­lut­ed back­drop where the sto­ried and pro­found 70-year-lega­cy of the Co-Op­er­a­tive Move­ment in T&T is be­ing over­whelm­ing­ly chal­lenged by the ar­cha­ic Co-Op­er­a­tive So­ci­eties Act of 1971, con­strained gov­ern­ment en­gage­ment and sys­temic in­er­tia.

This ca­coph­o­ny of ob­sta­cles have col­lec­tive­ly col­lud­ed to not on­ly weak­en the po­ten­tial im­pact to be had by the move­ment, but have al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly di­min­ished the abil­i­ty of the move­ment to man­i­fest its full re­al­i­sa­tion. Giv­en this threat­en­ing out­look, the con­fer­ence sought to pro­vide an open, trans­par­ent and res­o­lu­tion-ori­ent­ed space where the afore­men­tioned chal­lenges could be ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dressed, so as to strength­en and mod­ernise the move­ment go­ing for­ward.

The vary­ing themes and con­ver­sa­tions at the con­fer­ence were al­so tru­ly en­rich­ing and in­sight­ful, par­tic­u­lar­ly the em­pha­sis that was placed on in­creas­ing youth par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Co-Op­er­a­tive Move­ment, in or­der to en­sure its long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, as well as the val­ue placed on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, strate­gic part­ner­ships and in­sti­tu­tion­al mod­erni­sa­tion.

As a young pro­fes­sion­al my­self and a mem­ber of staff at the CCLCS, this tru­ly res­onat­ed with me. From per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence, I have been able to un­der­stand the at­ti­tudes of the youth as it re­lates to the co-op­er­a­tive sec­tor and cred­it unions in par­tic­u­lar, with it of­ten be­ing said that this area is meant for the el­ders of so­ci­ety and that it is not a space for young peo­ple to make a last­ing im­pact and make their pres­ence known.

Af­ter hav­ing sat and wit­ness­ing the crit­i­cal dis­cus­sions which took place, I not on­ly feel well equipped to chal­lenge those afore­men­tioned neg­a­tive sen­ti­ments as it re­lates to youth in­volve­ment in the co-op­er­a­tive sec­tor, but have al­so de­vel­oped a new­found ap­pre­ci­a­tion for co-op­er­a­tives and the tan­gi­ble im­pact which they can have on so­ci­eties, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en their sub­stan­tive fi­nan­cial as­set base and ex­pan­sive mem­ber­ship.

This ap­pre­ci­a­tion al­so ex­tends to the very in­sti­tu­tion with­in which I am pro­fes­sion­al­ly sit­u­at­ed, Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-Op­er­a­tive Stud­ies.

Whilst I had a fair­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry un­der­stand­ing of the work be­ing done by CCLCS in the field of labour, achiev­ing stake­hold­er-cen­tric de­cent work and ac­cel­er­at­ing work­er em­pow­er­ment, the co-op­er­a­tive as­pect had not been ex­treme­ly salient in my mind.

Fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of the con­fer­ence and recog­nis­ing its val­ue in stim­u­lat­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion and in­no­va­tion with­in the co-op­er­a­tive move­ment, not on­ly am I now con­fi­dent in my knowl­edge of the mul­ti­tude of ar­eas with­in which co-op­er­a­tives en­gage in, but I am al­so keen­ly aware of the role which CCLCS, with its “sa­cred re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” in the words of Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, plays in deep­en­ing co-op­er­a­tive ed­u­ca­tion, train­ing and up­skilling as the pre­mier ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion both na­tion­al­ly and re­gion­al­ly for this area of ex­per­tise.

An­oth­er note­wor­thy mo­ment of pro­found, in­ter­nal rev­e­la­tion dur­ing the con­fer­ence was the ex­plo­ration of the so­cial and sol­i­dar­i­ty econ­o­my (SSE) and its abil­i­ty, as an eco­nom­ic mod­el, to gal­vanise en­ter­pris­es and or­gan­i­sa­tions to serve col­lec­tive and gen­er­al in­ter­ests, and in so do­ing, pri­ori­tise peo­ple over prof­its.

This dis­sec­tion of the SSE and its role in co-op­er­a­tive de­vel­op­ment, car­ried out by John Bliek, an en­ter­prise and co­op­er­a­tive spe­cial­ist with the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ILO), was in­deed time­ly and served to am­pli­fy the themes and sen­ti­ments of the Caribbean World of Work Fo­rum Con­fer­ence held by CCLCS in Ju­ly 2025.

These over­ar­ch­ing themes and sen­ti­ments were ground­ed in fore­cast­ing the fu­ture of work in the Caribbean re­gion, but from the per­spec­tive of the SSE.

As such, in this re­gard, through the de­lib­er­a­tions of Bliek, not on­ly did the promi­nence of the SSE be­come full cir­cle for me, but I was al­so able to bet­ter un­der­stand the in­tri­ca­cies root­ed with­in the ethos of the co-op­er­a­tive move­ment.

All things con­sid­ered, the 2025 Na­tion­al Co-Op­er­a­tive Con­fer­ence rep­re­sent­ed a sem­i­nal mo­ment in the tra­jec­to­ries of the wider co-op­er­a­tive move­ment and the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties of T&T.

While there still re­mains a way to go be­fore the co-op­er­a­tive sec­tor is ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment agen­da, con­ver­sa­tions and de­bates like those gen­er­at­ed at the con­fer­ence are in­deed promis­ing in terms of greater pri­or­i­ty be­ing al­lo­cat­ed to the sec­tor and its abil­i­ty to pro­pel all facets of the de­vel­op­men­tal path which T&T em­barks on for the fore­see­able fu­ture.