'This is ours' - Somaliland women smell success as frankincense business takes off

Conexsus provides financial, technical, and mentorship support to cooperatives and small producers in the Amazon rainforest with the goal of shifting investment and resources to sustainable “bioeconomies” often managed by Indigenous communities. One such cooperative, Coopatrans, has been able to improve its relationships with farmers thanks to credit from Conexsus assuring payments can be made on time.

Twenty women in Kaduna, Nigeria formed a cooperative in 2015 that pooled their farm labor earnings to collectively purchase land, transforming them from hired laborers earning ₦2,000-₦10,000 per day into independent landowners who now harvest enough to support their families' education and healthcare while contributing food to their community.

The Awra Amba community is founded on broad values such as gender equality of labor, women’s rights, children’s rights, and caring for the elderly and vulnerable, and residents work together on 15 democratically elected committees to make key decisions. Research shows that the community has achieved higher life expectancy, literacy rates, and measures of gender equality than the country’s national averages.

Worker cooperatives, which are worker-owned and democratically operated, are spreading across the United States as a response to the large number of baby-boomer-owned businesses closing with no succession plan. Baltimore’s Common Ground Cafe is an example of staff, the community, and a local cooperative incubator coming together to do just that.

A women’s cooperative in Malawi empowers women to diversify their incomes by selling a variety of produce instead of relying only on selling fish. The women in the collective split the proceeds and buy fish in groups to combat increasing sex-for-fish requests from fishermen.

In the 1960s, Uruguay created a cooperative housing policy designed to help ease housing shortages especially among lower- and middle-class residents, with cooperative projects bolstered by state loans and technical support. The country now counts over 70,000 co-op-owned homes, making up roughly 5 percent of the housing stock.

The Barkum Women Rice Processors Association in rural Kano, Nigeria, secured a collective ₦8.8 million loan through cooperative action and training, enabling 38 women to build profitable rice-processing businesses that have financed their children's education and generated monthly incomes for members.

In The Gambia, a National FGM Strategy and Action Plan backed by the government, UNICEF, and the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Welfare, has worked to translate a legislative ban on Female Genital Mutilation into real community change. The strategy combines policy reform, school and community awareness programs, engagement with religious and traditional leaders, and empowerment programs for girls. Despite FGM persisting in rural communities, FGM rates among girls aged 0–14 have declined from approximately 76% to 45%.

A parametric heat insurance program covering 276,800 women workers across India provides automatic cash payouts (₹300-1,250) when temperatures exceed city-specific thresholds for consecutive days, successfully delivering financial relief during extreme heat events. However, the program faces sustainability challenges due to heavy subsidies, trust issues when thresholds aren't met, and the need for behavioral change among beneficiaries.

Worker cooperatives like the bookstore/cafe Red Emma's partnered with other organizations to create Seed Commons, a national financing network that provides loans without requiring individual collateral. Seed Commons has distributed over $100 million in loans supporting 15,000 workers nationwide. In the Baltimore region specifically, the network has invested $25 million, created 250 ownership-track jobs, and supported 23 cooperatives.