Monday 30 June 2003

The European Director of the International Co-operatives Association (ICA), Gabriella Sozánski, will launch a report tomorrow at the University of Technology, Sydney that looks into the trends of co-operative formation in Australia, both the motivations and barriers.

This Saturday July 5 is United Nations International Co-operative Day and the century-old UN-affiliated ICA represents 760 million people around the world who are members of co-operatives.

Ms Sozánski, in Australia to attend the World Congress of Credit Unions, has been invited to Sydney by the Australian Centre for Co-operative Research and Development (ACCORD). A joint centre of the University of Technology, Sydney and Charles Sturt University, ACCORD is Australia's leading research and development organisation serving co-operatives, mutuals and the wider social economy.

Ms Sozánski is launching the report New Co-operatives: Motivations and Barriers, which profiles the formation of new co-operative businesses in Australia over the past ten years - around 300 in NSW alone.

ACCORD General Manager and Senior Research Fellow Garry Cronan said that in Europe co-operatives have emerged as a force for social transformation, challenging globalisation and an over-reliance on market forces.

"Social co-operatives in Italy are providing pathways to work and in Eastern Europe they are playing an important role in countries still in transition from the break up of the Soviet Union," Mr Cronan said.

"Globally co-operatives provide more than 100 million jobs. Collectively the sector is bigger than the multi-national corporations, but it doesn't have the same prominence because it is made up of many small organisations working at a local level."

Based in Geneva, Ms Sozánski worked for the National Federation of Agricultural Co-operatives in Hungary and the European Office of the World Council of Credit Unions before joining the ICA. She studied international trade, holds a degree in business administration and did post-graduate studies in political sciences.

New Co-operatives: Motivations and Barriers will be launched at 11.30am 1^st at the ACCORD offices on the UTS Kuring-gai campus.

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Further information and interviews:
Suzanne Henderson,
ACCORD Communications Manager,
Ph (02) 9514 5752 or 0407 104 268

Issued by:
Terry Clinton
UTS Media Office
Ph 9514 1623 or 0419 293 261