One woman with a sewing machine is a small business. Fifty women in a registered cooperative can negotiate for raw material, share equipment and win an order none of them could fill alone.
Cooperative development promotes collective growth, economic resilience and social empowerment. By bringing people together to pool resources, share responsibilities and work towards common goals, cooperatives and self-help groups create inclusive development and financial stability — especially in rural and under-served communities.
Ubantu runs training programmes and awareness sessions explaining what cooperatives are for and what they make possible, then provides hand-holding support through the registration process for groups that decide to go ahead.
Registration is the beginning, not the end. The Foundation works to build the capacity of members of newly formed cooperative societies in business development and in establishing livelihood enterprises that can actually meet their goals.
Ubantu Foundation has adopted multi-purpose cooperative societies in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, West Bengal and other states, providing technical support to help them reach their business goals.
At Robertsganj in Uttar Pradesh, the Foundation works with a Cluster Level Federation made up of 15 village organisations and 150 self-help groups — the scale a cooperative structure makes possible.
In May 2026 Ubantu organised two training programmes in collaboration with NDDB Dairy Services, providing vocational training in bio-enzyme and candle making to over 100 women members of a dairy Farmer Producer Organisation in Lakhimpur district.
It is the model in miniature: an existing producer collective, an added skill, and a second income stream that does not depend on the milk price.
Cooperative development is an international movement, and Ubantu takes part in it. In June 2026 the Foundation’s Director attended the African Cooperative Conference and visited Fundação Universitária in Maputo — an organisation supporting small enterprises across all eleven provinces of Mozambique through incubation, entrepreneurship and research.
Meetings with cooperative federations, civil society groups and local entrepreneurs mapped where India and Mozambique can work together: processing and packaging infrastructure, agriculture and horticulture, dairy and fisheries. A follow-up consultative meeting in July 2026 was co-hosted with the Kairali Agriculture Multi-State Cooperative Society, Kerala.
If your group is considering registering a cooperative society, or you would like to partner with us on cooperative development, we would be glad to hear from you.
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