The newly elected Office Bearers of the ICA-AP Committee on Women held their first in-person meeting at the ICA-AP Regional Office, New Delhi on 23 January. Ms. Chitose Arai, Chairperson, and Ms. Priti Patel, Vice-Chairperson were accompanied by Ms. Takako Tsuchiya from the International Department of the Japanese Consumers’ Co-operative Union (JCCU).
The in-person meeting served as a good opportunity for the Office Bearers and Committee Secretary Ms. Simren Singh from ICA-AP to discuss the activity plan for 2023.
2023 marks an important year for the Committee as it completes 25 years since its inception in 1998. To commemorate the landmark event, the Committee, in collaboration with JCCU, will organize a celebratory event on 19 and 20 September 2023, in Tokyo.
As one of the most active committees of ICA-AP, the Committee on Women has come a long way since 1998, when it was established with the objective to promote women’s inclusion and participation in cooperatives. Since then, various activities and programs have been undertaken to serve the evolving needs of women in cooperatives.
In the meeting, the Office Bearers reflected on the Committee’s core work over the years and elucidated four broad areas under which the Committee’s work gets represented: 1) Economic empowerment 2) Social empowerment 3) Knowledge, education, and training, and 4) Solidarity. This year the Committee will document its new strategy and activity plans based on these four areas.
The Committee will kickstart its activities with an online event to commemorate International Women’s Day in March. It will organize a virtual lecture on the theme “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality” on 7 March. Last year, the Committee entered into a four-year partnership with the National Confederation of Cooperatives (NATCCO), Philippines for a ‘Capacity Building Program for Women Cooperators on Climate Change and Action in Asia and Pacific.’
In line with ICA-AP’s strategic objective, “Strengthen cooperatives as business enterprises and development actors” and its pillar “Sustainable Development” – “Capacitate role in climate action.” The partnership is focused on developing a training manual on climate change and action and will deliver thematic training of trainers on this subject up to 2025. The manual will be pilot tested in May 2023 in a member country of the Committee.
The Office Bearers also utilized this opportunity to meet and interact with the ICA-AP staff and Mr. Dileep Sanghani, President of the National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI). The Office Bearers visited the Krishak Bharati Cooperative Ltd. (KRIBHCO) and met Dr. Chandrapal Singh Yadav, President, ICA-AP who lauded the efforts of the Committee on its work on gender inclusion and equality in cooperatives and congratulated them on the silver jubilee year of the Committee, reads a release from ICA-AP.