Cambodia Partnership for Sustainable Agriculture (CPSA) expedites innovation, entrepreneurship and youth engagement in the agricultural sector through its Enterprise Agricultural Cooperative Incubation Programme (EACIP), which adopted the ILO Our.COOP and Activity-Based Learning training approach.

Youth engaging in agricultural cooperatives training © CPSA

CPSA, with the ILO’s financial and technical assistance, has been operating the EACIP initiative aiming to improve the agricultural sector in Cambodia by increasing its productivity and economic return for the rural economy, while sharing prosperity with 2,500 direct and indirect beneficiaries. The programme has developed twelve training modules including leadership, management, entrepreneurship, business management and agriculture. Contents of ILO Our.COOP were integrated into these modules, particularly in areas of business ideation, market research, business plan development and basic organizational structures of agricultural cooperatives.

Our.COOP is an ILO training programme aimed at those interested in starting, launching and managing a cooperative in a participatory and efficient manner. The programme promotes agricultural cooperatives in underserved communities, such as rural, informal and young workers in Asia and beyond.

Over three months from August 2021, CPSA together with its partner organizations provided an incubation programme for 25 youth participants using the initial twelve modules. Trainings were conducted on a weekly basis, and young participants gained knowledge on how to start and improve agricultural cooperatives through the Our.COOP content. The trainings were followed by inspiring presentations and talks by 20 guest speakers who specialise in relevant fields.

Participants will take lessons learned to their next apprenticeship programme in agricultural cooperatives and disseminate the knowledge gained from trainings and Our.COOP tools to agricultural cooperative members in Kampong Cham Province and Kampong Thom Province.

Our.COOP is one of the ILO’s Activity-Based Learning programmes, available at the Peer Learning Hub Download page. Any organization can download for free and adopt to any of their own programmes to empower cooperatives, youths, vulnerable people, entrepreneurs and MSMEs.