Everything Schools Need to Know to Celebrate the International Year of Cooperatives 2025

The United Nations has designated 2025 as the International Year of Cooperatives, emphasizing how cooperation can address global challenges and promote fairness, equality, and sustainability. Cooperatives show the power of teamwork, resource sharing, and community building. This year provides an excellent opportunity for schools, teachers, parents, and students to explore cooperation’s benefits and actively take part. Let’s dive in!
For Schools
- Teamwork Week: Plan a week of team-building workshops, inspiring assemblies, and group projects to highlight the benefits of collaboration. Encourage classes to design cooperative games and take part in challenges that rely on working together.
- Student-Run Cooperatives: Support students in forming clubs like book exchanges, snack stands, or art collectives where they can practice shared decision-making and leadership. Provide guidance on creating business plans and rotating leadership roles.
- Community Connections: Host guest speakers from local cooperatives to share their experiences. Set up mentorship programs where students can visit cooperative businesses and learn firsthand. Cooperative-themed assemblies can also be organized on a monthly basis.
- Cross-Subject Integration: Incorporate cooperative themes across subjects. Explore historical cooperative movements in history lessons, cooperative business models in economics, and teamwork art projects.
For Teachers
- Cooperative Learning Techniques: Use strategies like peer mentoring, group assignments, and collaborative problem-solving activities to emphasize teamwork in the classroom. Encourage reflective journaling for students to evaluate their cooperation experiences.
- Professional Development: Attend workshops focused on integrating cooperative principles into lesson planning and student engagement strategies. Share best practices with colleagues.
- Service Learning: Guide students in planning community-focused projects like food drives or fundraisers with the help of local or regional cooperatives. Encourage partnerships where students can volunteer and apply their cooperative skills.
- Monthly Cooperative Spotlights: Celebrate cooperation regularly with events showcasing student teamwork achievements. Create reflection opportunities where students discuss how cooperation improved their work.
For Parents
- Family Team Projects: Take part in community initiatives like park clean-ups, family gardens, or cooperative craft fairs. Introduce a family challenge where everyone collaborates to track and share progress on cooperative goals.
- Support Local Cooperatives: Shop at and promote local cooperatives, explaining their values to children. Encourage kids to make small purchases and learn about fair trade principles.
- Discuss Cooperation: Share inspiring stories of successful cooperatives like Amul and explain how teamwork creates positive changes. Use documentaries and storytelling to make these concepts relatable.
- Family Game Nights: Organize game nights with cooperative board games that emphasize teamwork. After playing, discuss the strategies and lessons learned during the game.
For Students
- Start a Club: Form cooperative clubs such as a shared library, hobby groups, or creative arts collective where everyone contributes equally. Rotate leadership roles to ensure inclusivity.
- Creative Competitions: Join contests focused on cooperation, like designing posters, writing stories, or making short films about teamwork.
- Field Trips: Visit local cooperatives with your parents or teachers to observe how shared responsibility and teamwork help businesses thrive. Interview leaders and members of cooperatives, and create presentations based on the experience.
- Innovative Projects: Launch initiatives promoting cooperative values, such as kindness campaigns or school recycling drives. Work collaboratively to create long-term positive impacts on the school community.
Why Cooperatives Matter!
Cooperatives play a crucial role in building inclusive, resilient communities by promoting fairness, equality, and sustainability. They show how shared decision-making and collaboration lead to positive outcomes for everyone involved. Cooperatives have been instrumental in poverty alleviation and wealth creation in many parts of the world. For instance, the Amul cooperative in India transformed the dairy industry by empowering small-scale farmers, leading to increased incomes and economic stability in rural areas. Similarly, Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom’s research on community-managed resources highlighted how cooperatives can sustainably manage resources and improve livelihoods by promoting local governance and shared benefits.
Celebrating the International Year of Cooperatives helps students and families understand the power of working together to create positive change. When people collaborate, they can achieve extraordinary things. Whether you’re a student, teacher, parent, or community leader, embracing cooperative values can foster empathy, respect, and shared success. Let’s make 2025 a year to remember by spreading the spirit of cooperation far and wide.
Together, we can make a lasting difference, one small cooperative effort at a time.
A detailed toolkit on how schools can celebrate the International Year of Cooperatives 2025 is coming soon!