By Wilson J Hormeguera

In a workshop for cooperatives, Xavier University - Governance and Leadership Institute (XU-GLI), in partnership with the First Community Cooperative - Community Outreach Foundation (FICCO-COF), highlighted the importance of strategic management and good governance to strengthen their respective organizations.

Held on June 6-7 at the FICCO training hall in Cagayan de Oro City, the workshop followed the Balanced Scorecard Framework (BSF) where the participants redefined their cooperative’s vision and mission, set the desired future for their coop and clarified the values they need to exemplify in the organization.

To achieve their revised mission, the participants evaluated their cooperative’s organizational environment and community engagements through SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis and came up with a set of strategic goals.

The second part of the workshop focused on achieving the indicators of good governance: participation, transparency, and accountability.

Through games such as pyramid building, tower building, pipeline, message relay, and puzzle box, the indicators of good governance were simulated in the workshop.

The event drew together the board members of different cooperatives: West City Central Multipurpose Cooperative (WCCS-MPC), Multipurpose Cooperative - Gusa (MPC-G), P-1 Danatag Farmers Multipurpose Cooperative (P1-DFMPC), Oro Court Employees Cooperative (OCECO), San Antonio Multipurpose Cooperative (SAMCO), Bulua National High School Multipurpose Cooperative (BNHS-MPC), Forest View Credit Cooperative (FVCC), An Mga Maglipayon Samar Leyte Cooperative (AMSLC), Fonus Multipurpose Cooperative (FMPC) and FICCO.

GLI continues to strengthen the cooperatives and other organizations through capacity-building interventions as part of the thematic on governance under XU’s Research and Social Outreach (RSO) cluster.