One of the fundamental sources of sustainability of cooperatives is their capacity to cooperate among themselves by forming horizontal groups and consortia. Increasingly, cooperatives involved in community services have chosen this strategy. Cooperatives of the same group can specialize in different aspects of service delivery and can manage in common a number of entrepreneurial functions, such as financing, training, innovation, and responding to tenders. In the end, they offer better quality services to all local citizens, while making them more affordable, and with a higher guarantee that they can last.

Watch the film launched at the workshop “Access to community services” held in Cape Town on 3 November.