Teaching materials

In the early 19th century, the social conseqences of rapid industrialisation led groups of working people to be enterprising. They developed values based enterprises to address the issues they faced:

• Friendly Societies and Mutual Insurance - providing savings schemes, health and death benefits;
• Building Societies - enabling access to housing;
• Co-operatives Societies - challenging the standards operating in retailing.

Today the core values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity are shared by the global co-operative movement with over 800 million members in over 100 countries.

It is a form of enterprise that the United Nations has stated improves the lives of over half of humanity.

These resources derive from work undertaken with a network of ten Business and Enterprise, teachers have also used the materials across the curriculum and in Enterprise Education.

The activities in this module begin with an overview of how co-operative enterprises are making a difference, explore some of the 300 largest co-operative and mutal enterprises in the world and end with an inspiring look at how co-operatives are changing the lives of people in developing countries.

Each activity in the module has a short Opening Video. A transcript of each video is available by clckng the relevant link.

To view the video that opens the module click Module Video. A transcript is available click Transcript of Module Video