Jeremiah Waller-Bridge

Farm Gate Market

Address: 104 Bathurst St, Hobart TAS 7000, Australia

Improves motor skills - Students who do art and crafts on regular basis learn to use art tools and techniques like different types of brush,

If you view the market as sliding into a deep trough, American Express represents a good, steady long-term value play, as Osteen points out

Mumbai, India was the venue for the two-day round table dialogue (RTD) on the role of co-operative banks and social finance institutions in promoting and financing social initiatives and social and solidarity enterprises (SSEs). The RTD was organized under the aegis of the National Federation of State Cooperative Banks (NAFSCOB), Eco Foundation for Sustainable Alternatives (EFSA), the International Cooperative Alliance Asia and Pacific (ICA-AP), the Mont-Blanc Meeting- International Forum of the Social and Solidarity Economy Entrepreneurs (MBM), the International Cooperative Banks Association (ICBA) and the International Association of Investors in the Social Economy (INAISE). In attendance at the meeting were over 30 representatives from State and Urban Cooperative Banks, National Federation of Urban cooperative Banks, National Cooperative Agriculture & Rural Development Banks’ Federation, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), UNDP, National Cooperative Union of India, AnupammaPariwar Group, SEWA, IFFCO Foundation, and subject matter experts.

SSEs are composed of a plurality of organizational forms that produce goods and services to their members or to the community. They are based on the primacy of people over capital, hold a long-term perspective, emphasize participation of member’s stakeholders in the governance of the organization and reinvest profits into their mission. SSE includes cooperatives and other forms of social enterprises, self-help groups, community-based organizations, common groups, associations of informal economy workers, service provisioning NGOs, solidarity finance schemes, amongst others. Its role has become even more significant in recent years, as it has proved to be a major anti-cyclical force in confronting the economic crisis.

The presentations by Cooperative Banks and Social Banks at the RTD showed the deep roots both have in rural and urban areas of India. The Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) at the village level have played a significant role in implementing the directives of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and NABARD into agriculture credit; but, remain captive instruments of the policies of the Central and State Governments.  The Cooperative Banks have been at the forefront of setting up and nurturing of Self Help Groups (SHGs), that covers 100 million households, and caters to a segment that forms the core focus of the initiatives related to the SSE. The Social Banks with a singular focus on members have empowered them not only with financial services, but also many non-financial services, to overcome their many social problems, including insurance.  Cooperative Banks and Social finance institutions mainly cater to the needs of the unorganized or informal sector that constitutes a pivotal part of the Indian economy as they account for more than 90 per cent of workforce and about 50 per cent of the national product.