Celebrate in Your Community

How do you plan to celebrate the International Year of Cooperatives?

US cooperatives have a crucial role to play in ensuring the success of the International Year of Cooperatives—but so do individuals! Here are some ideas for individuals as well as cooperatives for celebrating cooperatives throughout 2012.

If You Are an Individual

• Join a co-op or credit union. If you're already a member of a co-op,  tell your friends about how great your co-op is.
• Make a video about your favorite co-op and enter it in the My Co-op Rocks contest.
• Write on your Facebook page or tweet about the great things your co-op does for you or your community.
• Submit an entry in the Coop’Art competition, a global artistic competition designed to encourage youth to creatively express their views on cooperative principles. The competition launches at the International Co-operative Alliance General Assembly in Cancun, Mexico in November.
• Get the International Year of Cooperatives Twibbon! What is Twibbon? It's a powerful awareness tool that overlays a small icon onto your profile images on Twitter and Facebook to make a visually impactful statement. Get yours here.
• Be heard! Write or visit your local or state government and tell them how important cooperatives are to you!
• Volunteer to help your local co-ops create an International Year of Cooperatives celebration!

If You Work for a Cooperative

• Be a 2012 champion within your own organization, membership or sector. Encourage your directors, staff, and colleagues to think about how your cooperative can celebrate 2012.
• Register for a .coop domain and use your domain name to showcase your cooperative values.
• Develop a cross-sector regional network of cooperatives to collaborate on ways to build awareness of the array of cooperative enterprises in your community. Come together to demonstrate the value of cooperative business to individual and social needs.
• Use your existing communications tools to help disseminate information about 2012. Websites, intranets, internal newsletters, member publications, even sales flyers and point-of-sale promotional material, can be useful vehicles for getting the word out.
• Check out the IYC Toolkit for resources to help with your celebration!
• Stimulate thinking within your own organization, sector, or membership about a 2012 legacy project or fund that might contribute to promoting or supporting cooperatives in the United States and around the world.
• Think of 2012 as a springboard, not just an end in itself!