Federation of Co-operative Agrarian Youth Centres
Date of Incorporation
September 1950
Membership
The Federation has over 600 associates. Their average age is 21 years old; most have secondary school education and approximately 30% have university education. The minimum age for joining the Federation is fourteen years.
Activities
The Federation’s main activities are training young people and helping farm families improve their production methods. Through training, the Federation also tries to encourage the development of co-operative and technical entrepreneurial attitudes among youth. Though it is concerned that its young entrepreneurial members know about dairying, it also wants them to know about co-operatives in other sectors as well. The Federation believes that co-operativism is a social attitude: “you do not only learn to become a co-operativist at SanCor, but to be a co-operativist in any environment in which you participate”. The Federation promotes activities that will diversify manufacturing and make it possible to for young people to find work within their rural setting. Some of its most important production ventures are: the development of a forest nursery, a programme for the promotion of beekeeping, and a honey extraction room.
Organisational Form
The Federation is a non-governmental and non-profit organisation. It is open to children of producers who are members of the Dairy Farm Co-operatives associated with SanCor United Co-operatives Limited.
Service Area
The Federation is active within the provinces of Santa Fe, Córdoba, Entre Ríos, Buenos Aires and Santiago del Estero, the area known as the SanCor’s milk basin. Its headquarters are in the province of Córdoba.
Antecedents / Context
The young rural people of the SanCor milk basin became interested in co-operativism during the 1940s, when the co-operative movement in the country was experiencing a boom. Young people began to meet daily at the San Cor Co-operative, where they delivered their products. They recognised the need for training in co-operative theory and principles, and very soon they began to organize themselves to meet that need. With the support of the Co-operative’s executives, they formed the Co-operativist Agrarian Youth Organising Commission of the Zona SanCor. This Commission started spreading the idea and organising young dairy farmers in local Youth Centres. In the 1950s there were limited educational resources, especially in the rural areas, and the Federation was organized in part to help meet this need. In addition to its functions of assisting to provide vocational training demand and understanding of co-operativist doctrine, the Federation helped organize people to provide important social services necessary for the well-being of rural families. After 30 Youth Centres had been created, young people within the movement decided to form a second tier organisation and organized the Co-operativist Agrarian Youth Centres Zona SanCor, under the sponsorship of the Butter Factory SanCor. It was designated as the driving, co-ordinating, and guiding organisation for co-operativist agrarian youth within the dairy movement of SanCor.
Vision / mission
Our vision is “to be the organisation in the co-operative rural movement that trains and develops its young people socially, morally, and technically so that they can use the co-operative movement to pursue a better quality of life.” Our mission is “to train young rural co-operativists by providing them with knowledge and resources helpful in improving the productive process of their farm activities and in learning about the benefits of co-operative doctrine.”
Goals
- To group, co-ordinate, and guide the Co-operativist Agrarian Youth Centres’ present and future activities and to encourage their association with the Federation.
- To programme our cultural and organisational activities according to the tenets of co-operativism, thereby spreading the system’s virtues, providing youth with technical information, and encouraging more efficient performance within the co-operatives’ administration.
- To encourage diversified production and increased efficiency of the young people’s work in rural operations.
- To promote participation by rural young people in zone activities.
- To systematically analyse rural life issues and farm work so as to help members achieve a better and more dignified way of life.
- To encourage the unification and integration of a national co-operativist agrarian youth movement.
- To promote cultural and athletic events for the recreation and relaxation of members at the Federated Youth Centres.
Organisational Structure
The Zona SanCor is divided into 12 regional zones, each with a zonal youth centre. Each centre is associated with local youth centres. The Board of Directors of the Federation, made up of 18 young people, the children of producers of SanCor United Co-operatives Limited, directs the affairs of the movement. Members of the Board represent the various youth centres as well, in some instance, independent youth commissions in the regional zones. The Board is made up of 12 permanent members, representing all the regional zones, along with four substitute members and two trustees. Each permanent member serves for three years and each substitute serves for one year. Each trustee is elected for one year and can be re-elected for one additional term. The Board of Directors meets for two days each month. During the first day the Board members meet in committees to consider different issues and on the second day they meet to make decisions. All members work on a voluntary basis. Members have to be the children of a producer or an agriculture or livestock producer in order to join the Boards of Directors of the Federation or the Zonal Youth Centres. One must be between 21 and 36 years old to be a member of the Executive of the Youth Centres or the Federation. Members at the local level are encouraged to participate because doing so will enable them to attend the annual general assembly, which brings together participants from all of the regional centres.
Links to the community
Through their work with the Federation, young people have been encouraged to establish bonds with other service co-operatives, universities, and such institutions as the National Institute of Farming Technology (INTA).
Resources
Activities are funded by income generated by the Federation through its productive activities, as well as financial support from SanCor and support from the communities in which local youth centres are active. Members’ families also have made important contributions – and not just financial. Members are charged for services, usually on a cost recovery basis.
Future Plans
Plans for the future include strengthening the Rural Co-operativist Family and slowing down the rural exodus of young people. This objective will be achieved by encouraging economic activities that will allow young people to work close to the places in which they grew up. Activities that promote the interests of women are being emphasized in 2005.
Present concerns:
The co-op seeks to expand the possibilities for well-paying and satisfying work for members of rural families. One key concern is the problem of inter-generational succession, an historic issue of great importance in our country – and many other countries as well. An important part of this concern is the desire to create satisfactory work for young people on the farms and our co-op is trying to work with young co-operativists as they go through that process. In the case of those who are close to graduating from their schools, the Federation helps them to plan their future, taking into account their personal abilities and the probable viability of what they hope to do. The Federation offers technical and even financial support through its Programme of Sustainable Development.
In this sense, the SanCor Co-operative, and the co-operatives of the dairy sector linked to it, support the initiatives and projects young people propose and undertake. They encourage economic development within rural communities and help young people to become established through programmes of promotion, training, credit, technical assistance, and monitoring.
Message
The best advice for co-operativist youth and youth in general is that they need to become active and participate. “Youth is not future, it is present...if we organize we can become activists able to change the future.” A way to encourage more young people to use the co-operative model to satisfy their economic and social needs would be to encourage participation within existing co-operatives. By being involved in the programmes meeting their interests and needs and by being willing and able to contribute their time and energy, they can make important contributions to the development of educational and developmental projects.
When young people are involved, the value of working together becomes more apparent. Governments and educational institutions should promote the teaching of co-operative education in all institutions so that young people can know the system and help it grow.
