The CCW Global Youth Forum under the theme “Co-operatives and Youth: Empowerment, Employment, Engagement” was held in Nesebar Bulgaria from September 22 to 23, 2016.

The forum was organized under the aegis of the Consumer Co-operatives Worldwide (CCW), and hosted by Bulgaria Central Co-operative Union (CCU). The 2-day forum was attended by 31 co-operators consisting of mainly youth from 14 countries.

The event targeting youth co-operators was the first of its kind organized by CCW.

An opening speech was given by Dr. Peter Stefanov, President of CCW and CCU, expressing that over 1.8 billion youth worldwide are potential co-operative leaders and members, however, there are a number of youths who have fallen into vicious circle of poverty, isolation from education, and unemployed. He further emphasized the necessity of cooperatives to examine the conditions surrounding youth problems and think of appropriate solutions as part of co-operative vision for the next 30 to 50 years. He shared CCW’s commitment to address these problems and stated that the forum was the beginning of it.

Taken turns, ASADA Katsumi, President of JCCU and Vice President of Consumer Cooperatives Worldwide gave a message to the youth by sharing with them the present-day mission and expectations of co-operatives. He mentioned that the 17 challenges advocated by the United Nations for changing the world as listed in the SDGs namely: elimination of poverty and hunger, eliminating inequality, and ensuring the sustainability of the environment, cannot be solved by the globalization model who profiteers beyond the borders, so cooperatives are expected to build a society which is affluent and where people can live in with a sense of security and stressed that the youth becomes the leading role. He ended by saying that for human resource development co-ops will continue to supervise and educate the youth to be able to adjust and fit in the changing age.

Ms. NISHIMOTO Yuki, special advisor to the ICA-AP Business Office in Malaysia reported on the “Human resource development of youth cooperators in consumer co-op in Japan”.