“Cooperative’s main challenge is intercooperation”, Manuel Mariscal, President of CICOPA

Interviewed by Acción magazine he insisted on underlining the fact that intercooperation is “cooperativism’s main challenge”. “It is an issue we have yet to resolve. We need to reflect and find ways to measure indicators to analyse intercooperation. The Sustainable Development Goals introduced indicators that give us the opportunity for intercooperation, because they can allow us to find out what the first step is”.

Manuel Mariscal sees intercooperation as an over-arching concept: “We don’t want to limit ourselves to intercooperation solely with other cooperatives, but to open ourselves up to working with SMEs and micro-SMEs who face the same challenges as us. If we intercooperate, we are not only opening ourselves to better chances of survival, but also to a greater ability to lobby public bodies who can resolve some of our problems”.

When asked about the role of young people in CICOPA he said young people are not just important, “they are essential. They are essential to the survival of cooperative companies. The worker cooperative formula allows young people, facing job losses and precarious working conditions, to have opportunities”.