Fully agree with John Rouse addition. Development of rural cooperatives should ideally be bottom -up....incremental efforts where those involved take small but incremental steps on various attributes that make a cooperative successful. Small incremental steps such as self selection, self organization and self management, enable the cooperatives have the ''glue'' in governance and cohesion that holds them together. That ''Glue'' is their determination, motivation, willingness, courage, idea with market and being able to produce good quality products. From our own experience, those external people who help such cooperatives, should avoid temptation of providing gifts in form of resources, etc, but focus instead on giving them basic enterprise skills that will help glue them together and operate as a business entity.
Fully agree with John Rouse addition. Development of rural cooperatives should ideally be bottom -up....incremental efforts where those involved take small but incremental steps on various attributes that make a cooperative successful. Small incremental steps such as self selection, self organization and self management, enable the cooperatives have the ''glue'' in governance and cohesion that holds them together. That ''Glue'' is their determination, motivation, willingness, courage, idea with market and being able to produce good quality products. From our own experience, those external people who help such cooperatives, should avoid temptation of providing gifts in form of resources, etc, but focus instead on giving them basic enterprise skills that will help glue them together and operate as a business entity.
Joseph Mulupi