India
IFFCO MD US Awasthi receives ICA’s Rochdale Pioneers Award 2024 | India News – Times of India
Awasthi, who joined IFFCO as CEO in 1993, expressed his happiness at the recognition, writing on AWARD from International Cooperative Alliance @icacoop for my contribution to the growth and development of cooperatives in India and promoting the ethos of IFFCO and the Indian cooperative model across the world. My sincere thanks to everyone who supports me in my work.”
The ICA established the Rochdale Pioneers Award in 2000. The purpose of this award is to recognize an individual or, under special circumstances, a cooperative organization that has contributed to innovative and financially sustainable cooperative activities that have significantly benefited their membership.
The recipient of the first Rochdale Pioneers Award was Dr. Verghese Kurian from India. Eminent faces from the co-operative sector, such as Colombia’s Francisco Luis Jimenez Arcila, Britain’s Lloyd Wilkinson, Roberto Rodrigues, Howard Brodsky and Byeong-won Kim, among others, have been awarded the prestigious Rochdale Pioneers Award.
Earlier this month, India hosted the ICA Global Cooperative Conference and the ICA General Assembly for the first time in the ICA’s 130-year history.
At the conference, Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasized the need to establish global financial institutions that could finance cooperatives around the world. He commended the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) for its enormous role and said: “We will have to think about a Collaborative Financial Model to ensure easy and transparent financing for cooperatives. He underlined the importance of pooling financial resources to support small and financially vulnerable. Such shared financial platforms can play an essential role in financing major projects and providing loans to cooperatives. He further highlighted the potential of cooperatives in improving the supply chain by actively participating in purchasing, production and distribution processes. “
Founded in 1895 as an international nonprofit organization to advance the cooperative social enterprise model, the ICA represents more than 308 cooperative federations and organizations in 106 countries. It works with global and regional governments and organizations to create the legislative environment in which cooperatives can form and grow. The world’s largest 300 cooperatives have a combined annual turnover of $2.4 trillion (2021) and 300 million people around the world (10% of the workforce) secure their livelihoods in cooperatives, either through direct employment or to organize themselves through a cooperative.
