Pellervo Coop Center
About Pellervo
Pellervo is a service and a lobbying organisation for all Finnish co-operatives and mutuals and a forum for co-operative activities.
Our goal is to make the co-operative and mutual business model more known to the public and offer the co-operative model as a competitive alternative for those thinking about starting a business.
Pellervo was founded in 1899 and the Pellervo name comes from the national epic of Finland Kalevala where Sampsa Pellervoinen is the patron of field and harvest.
Advocacy work
Pellervo strives to influence the legislative work and the economic and financial policies in Finland to accommodate the cooperative business model.
Pellervo’s message to the decision-makers: Diversity of business models increases economic performance
- One business model – investor owned – is not enough
- Cooperative businesses play a significant role in the everyday life of people
- The scope of cooperatives is constantly expanding
- Over 3 000 cooperatives and mutuals
- Over 7 million memberships
- Cooperatives mean Finnish ownership
- They invest in Finland
Current issues and themes:
- The government's Entrepreneurship Strategy
- The Parliament's Co-operative Group
- Government’s action plan 2019-2023
- Entrepreneurship education at schools
- Research and teaching
- Start-up advice
- Co-operative governance
- Sustainability and CSR
Petition to the Government of Finland: Cooperatives should be a stronger part of school and university education!
A large number of Finnish business leaders and researchers appeal to the Ministers of Education and Culture to include the cooperative businesses model more strongly into the Finnish school education. The reason for this, is the common concern that the business and economic model represented by cooperative companies is now very poorly reflected in the education system.
Coop survey in Finland: awareness of cooperatives has improved
Understanding of what cooperation is and what cooperatives are has clearly become more widespread in recent years. It is primarily due to the improved communication of cooperative businesses themselves, not school education. Still, the vast majority (64%) of the Finnish population say they are fairly poorly or not at all familiar with cooperation.