21 Jul ECOOPE and the labour market

Our research experts Angela Colebrook, Minna Hämäilänen and Dana Redford, from the Cooperative College, Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) and Policy Experimentation and Evaluation Platform (PEEP) explain what ECOOPE will mean for the European labour market.

For Angela, Learning and Development manager from Cooperative College UK, the Entrepreneurial Cooperative Experience (ECOOPE) will provide «an opportunity for young people to learn about co-operatives and to explore the opportunities that co-operatives might bring as an alternative form of employment and entrepreneurship, and give them more employability options»; meanwhile Minna, coordinator of the Centre for Training and Development of LUT, thinks that the project will make that «an entrepreneurial mindset of young people will develop and they will start to seek for new employment possibilities more actively». Finally, the director of PEEP says that «ECOOPE goals are very important for the labour market. We see that co-operatives are an important new tendency for young people, specially. And we tend to have more stable growth and more stable employment with co-operatives, so we look to social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial education and training to develop further for this project».