January 31, 2023 at 31 Toad Lane, Rochdale, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom — The Global Executive Masterclass delegates toured The Rochdale Pioneers Museum and visited their Philippines Corner.

The Rochdale Pioneers Museum is widely regarded as the Home of the Worldwide Co-operative Movement. On December 21 1844, the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society opened their first little store selling pure, unadulterated food at fair prices and honest weights and measures. The Pioneers started a revolution in retailing which has played a significant part in our lives ever since. The museum provides an insight into the co-operative movement from its roots in Rochdale, to the circumstances that brought about the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers and to the subsequent social impact and growth of the domestic and international co-operative movement.

During a virtual event in October 2021 entitled “Cooperative Talks 2021 – The Cooperative Identity in the 21^st Century”, organized by CLIMBS Life and General Insurance Cooperative, through the Cooperative College of the Philippines (then the CLIMBS Institute of Management) and the National Federation of Cooperative Primaries in the Philippines (NaFeCOOP), Ms. Liz McIvor the Manager for the Co-operative Heritage Trust of the Rochdale Pioneers Museum unveiled a memento that would be displayed as the new Philippines Corner at the Rochdale Pioneers Museum. The memento is a testament of a sustainable and resilient cooperative movement in the Philippines; a recognition to all Filipino cooperators and cooperatives. It is a symbolic collective culmination of CLIMBS member-owners and other stakeholders’ commitment, hard work, and dedication; a fitting celebration of CLIMBS’s Golden Jubilee. This is CLIMBS’s way of cementing Bayanihan – the Filipino version of cooperativism – its seat in history at the birthplace of the Cooperative Movement.