Coopedia Knowledge Base launched

On the 8th of September Cooperatives Europe, as an activity under the ICA-EU Partnership (Coops4dev), released the Coopedia Knowledge Base – a collaborative search engine listing resources (guides, articles, videos, books and more) on cooperative entrepreneurship. 

Developed with cooperators in mind, Coopedia aims to gather the cooperative movement behind its collaborative aspect, giving cooperative experts the opportunity to reference their own resources and build a ‘one-stop shop’ for cooperative knowledge that may typically be scattered around different websites.

The Knowledge Base is available at coopedia.starter.coop

Coopedia will be particularly relevant to young entrepreneurs setting up new cooperative businesses worldwide, as well as students and researchers wanting to know more about the cooperative business model and its added value. Resources may be found on many topics related to cooperative entrepreneurship and the quality and relevance of the content are guaranteed through peer-review among cooperative experts. The resources may be filtered by topic, type and language.

The innovative software is based on Startin’blox technology – a freely available, modular and easy-to-use tool to build decentralised applications. As an open-source software, its code can be used and modified by anyone, following the fifth cooperative principle (education, training and information).

Cooperatives and cooperative umbrella organisations are particularly encouraged to implement their version of the Knowledge Base on their respective websites, where all referenced resources will be available alongside user’s own generated modules, for example restricted areas or chat boxes. Cooperatives Europe will be covering the costs of installation of the Coopedia iteration of the Knowledge Base for two of its members
(see the Expression of Interest).

The Knowledge Base is developed by Cooperatives Europe under the ICA-EU Partnership (#coops4dev). The idea emerged via the CoopStarter 2.0 project led by Cooperatives Europe and was implemented and upscaled via the Global Cooperative Entrepreneurs (GCE) programme, an activity of #coops4dev.

Agnes Mathis, Director at Cooperatives Europe commented:

“Coopedia Knowledge Base will serve as a catalyst for new cooperative start-ups, knowledge exchange and new partnerships across the world. We are proud to have developed a software that will not only bring added value to our members, but to the cooperative movement worldwide – a direct impact of the ICA-EU partnership and the Erasmus+ project. Moreover, the current pandemic underlined even more the importance of digital innovation and knowledge sharing as key factors to ensure inclusive economic growth. Coopedia is a great example of it and a way of being a part of the process.“

Access Coopedia at coopedia.starter.coop

Click to access the Coopedia resource center here to view the following resources

Information leaflet
Press release
Developer guide
Social media promotion
Promo kit