Staff of co-operatives from Indonesia, Thailand, and Philippines who were trained as Information Technology (IT) Specialists by the "Information Technology for Southeast Asian Co-operatives (it@coops) Project" gathered together for this Regional Forum held November 19-21, 2007, Antipolo City, Philippines. The Project is implemented from 2004-2007 in co-ops affiliated to national co-op federations in the three countries that are members of AWCF. The Project is a partnership of AWCF and InWEnt (Capacity Building International, Germany), with support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Antipolo Forum also sought to inspire more co-ops to use IT to improve competitiveness, to enhance operations and engagement in entrepreneurial work, and to set up IT-based business development centers (BDCs). The BDCs give services to co-op members who may be entrepreneurs, including co-op women members who may have difficulty accessing business services. The it@coops Project is geared extensively, though not exclusively, to women. More information about the Project is at: http://www.it-coops.net The Forum was hosted by the National Confederation of Cooperatives (NATCCO), AWCF’s member in the Philippines.

Co-ops are a proven instrument for people's empowerment and their achievement of a quality way of life, especially in Asia. With the it@coops Project that is piloting the introduction of IT and the usage of more IT applications to co-ops especially in Southeast Asia, more doors are being opened to these organizations, to vastly improve and greatly diversify their operations, to deliver even more effective and wider services to the members, and to be effective vehicles for growth amid strong competition from purely business organizations. The Project is helping bring the rapid developments in IT closer to co-ops, as big business has been the main beneficiaries of IT in the past few decades. As organizations that work against poverty primarily through collaboration, co-ops can effectively apply IT as a tool to improve operations and the lives of their members, especially as they get the opportunity to become entrepreneurs or to expand their existing enterprises.

The it@coops Project has three pillars or components: the training of co-op staff as IT specialists/trainers; the putting up of IT-supported BDCs in co-ops; and the setting up of national and transregional (Southeast Asia) virtual networks among co-ops.