The Phone Co‑op and the Co‑operative Press were recognised as outstanding co‑operatives at the dotCoop Awards held during the International Co‑operative Alliance General Assembly in Geneva, last month.
Accepting the award on behalf of The Phone Co‑op, chief executive Vivian Woodell said: “It is a great honour for The Phone Co‑op to be recognised at a global level, especially as the key criteria used by the judges were all about how well each organisation put into practice a distinctively co‑operative business approach, which is what we aim to do. I should like to pay tribute to our board, and to my colleagues, as well as to our customers and members for having made this achievement possible.”
The dotCoop Global Awards are given to those co‑operatives who demonstrate a strong commitment to the co‑operative business model. DotCoop also looked for co‑ops whose missions and practices clearly demonstrate co‑operative values, especially in their websites.
The Co‑operative Press Limited, received its award in acknowledgement of its overall contribution to the co‑operative movement in the UK and the world as the oldest co‑operatively-owned newspaper.
The three overall winners in the large, medium and small categories respectively were Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative, a fertilizer production and distribution cooperative with some 55 million members; National Cooperative Grocers Association, a co‑operatively owned trade association for US food co‑ops; and Pachamama Coffee Cooperative, a co‑operative owned by 150,000 coffee farmers worldwide.
The awards were presented by the dotCoop board chair, Louie Doering, at the International Co‑operative Alliance General Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.