“Kanagawa Prefectural Joint Committee of Cooperatives” was set up on March 7 in Yokohama, a capital city of the prefecture, by 83 cooperative organizations such as agricultural cooperatives, fisheries cooperatives, forest owners’ cooperatives, consumers’ cooperatives and workers’ cooperatives.
The Kanagawa Committee of Cooperatives aims at facilitating activities to disseminate values of cooperatives among the people in the prefecture.
The Committee also plans to organize seminars and lectures open to students and citizens in collaboration with universities and academic people in the prefecture.
“Cooperatives” were registered as an intangible cultural heritage of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO) last November.
In Japan, however, it is not yet well known that cooperatives have been gaining high international reputation in many years.
In such situations, leaders of cooperative movements in Kanagawa prefecture have organized the committee to implement their joint activities for promoting deeper people’s understanding on philosophies of cooperatives as well as bolster their campaign for local consumption of local products.
More than 100 representatives of cooperative organizations took part in the Committee’s inauguration meeting held in Yokohama city, where they reconfirmed the unity of their movements.
One of advisors to the Joint Committee, Professor Emeritus Yoichi Tashiro of Yokohama National University and Otsuma Women’s University, celebrated the inauguration, saying “Cooperatives are playing important functions as the backbone of regional communities.”