CORC CEO: 330 women’s rural cooperative companies operating in Iran
At present, 330 women’s rural cooperative companies, with 61,325 members and a total capital of $614,279 are operating in 2,238 villages across Iran, said a deputy agricultural Jihad minister.
Hossein Shirzad, who is also the managing director of Iran’s Central Organization for Rural Cooperatives (CORC), said women’s rural cooperative companies play a pivotal role in accelerating the country’s development, according to an email sent by CORC to Iran Daily.
These cooperatives have been established to, as an effective structure, encourage rural women’s cooperation and in line with making policies to coordinate and efficiently guide their activities in the society, he added.
Shirzad listed the activities to help improve the quality of women’s rural cooperative firms as holding training courses for these companies’ members and staff, implementing projects to create jobs and preparing the ground for the cooperatives to attend exhibitions.
Elaborating on his organization’s job creation plans, he said, generating more home-based jobs and diversifying economic activities in women’s rural cooperative firms will help expand the production capacity of this sector.
On the other hand, Shirzad added, empowering such cooperatives and boosting their efficiency contribute to achieving the Resistance Economy targets — set by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei — and lead to a business boom for their members and raise their income, which, per se, helps improve the quality of life of rural households and farmers and secure their livelihood.
He listed some of the future plans on the organizations’ agenda to empower rural women as improving marketing activities and holding permanent, seasonal, interprovincial exhibitions, expanding cooperation with other national and transnational organizations, setting up a nationwide union for women’s rural cooperatives, expanding cooperation and interaction with related organizations and bodies in the field of implementing job creation plans in cooperatives and promoting ecotourism and rural tourism through increasing interaction with UNESCO and signing contracts with Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization.