it@coops provides poverty-oriented cooperatives in Southeast Asia with basic and advanced ICT skills and stimulates ICT use for business development.

The it@coops website provides comprehensive information on the it@coops activities and latest news. Below follows a summary of it@inwent's involvement.

Concept and Members

it@inwent, together with the Asian Women in Cooperatives Development Forum (AWCF), created the it@coops network initiative in 2004, bringing together cooperative umbrella organizations in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Through the umbrella organizations, it@coops reaches out to their individual affiliate cooperative members.

Southeast Asian cooperatives have proved to be a successful form of economic organization for marginalized people, especially for female entrepreneurs - who are the main target group of the ICT trainings. Through ICT capacity building and ICT integration into their work, it@coops aims to strengthen the cooperatives in effectively fostering business start-ups and creating new employment opportunities. With its strong orientation towards the poor segments of the population, it@coops contributes to the attainment of the first Millennium Development Goal.

it@inwent's Activities in the it@coops Network

it@coops follows a 3-step approach:

• ICT multipliers of each participating cooperative receive an extensive training on basic and advanced ICT and ICT training skills. Experienced local training institutions conduct the trainings of about 5 months, in local languages, with the curricula tailored towards the specific demands of the respective cooperative environment. The contextually relevant ICT “train-the-trainer” qualification enables the cooperative representatives to, in turn, share their acquired skills with fellow cooperative members.
• The establishment of ICT business development centers at selected cooperative offices complements the ICT trainings. Such centers enable cooperative members and various Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) to gain access to ICT-related services.
• it@coops encourages the formation of online collaboration networks. The networks help the cooperative members, trainers, and project partners to be in contact and to improve their competitiveness through exchange of information, synchronization of operational procedures, and acting together on the market.

Since 2004, it@inwent has facilitated trainings of about 60 ICT multipliers of cooperatives and umbrella organizations in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

it@coops started with “Social Marketing” workshops in each country, bringing together leaders of the individual cooperatives, in order to ensure awareness and commitment to it@coops within respective management, right from the start. The participating cooperatives agreed to identify one, mostly female, representative take part in the it@coops ICT capacity development program and become the cooperative's ICT trainer.