The U.S. cooperative community, led by the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and U.S. Co-ops, is hosting the International Co-operative Alliance’s Board of Directors in Birmingham, Alabama next week.
The meeting is an opportunity to experience some of the region’s most significant sites related to the Civil Rights movement and for board members of both ICA and U.S. Co-ops to attend a joint session. Part of the conversation will include optimizing U.S. Co-ops’s work with ICA. U.S. Co-ops represents the U.S. cooperative community to this body.
On June 18, the board members of both organizations will travel to Birmingham, Selma and points in between—including the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of the violent confrontations involving voting rights marchers in 1965, and the National Voting Rights museum. Members of U.S. Co-ops’s Board of Directors will spend a day at the Federation’s training site in Epes, Alabama, where U.S. Co-ops will conduct its Board of Directors meeting.
Next week’s events mark the first time the U.S. cooperative community has hosted the ICA’s Board of Directors. Established in 1895, the ICA is the apex organization for cooperatives around the world.