Overall, the reports repeatedly highlight that youth are motivated to participate in cooperatives because cooperative philosophy and values align with both their own personal beliefs and mores, as well as with broad-scale strategies for social transformation. Time and time again, the general challenges facing youth were named as insufficient access to capital (for individuals and cooperatives alike) and lack of personal fulfillment and actualization. Youth are not attracted to cooperative work primarily to address their insufficient access to capital; rather, they seek cooperative work to cope with – and ultimately transform – the very system that functions to create the precarity under which they suffer.
Across the four surveyed reports, the least feedback was gathered from the Global South, which presents a considerable representation issue, especially since most of the world’s youth reside in the Global South region. There are myriad reasons for the lack of feedback, including the usual suspects: language, culture, communication styles, and technological access (which often correlates to financial resources). More specific to the Global South, the impacts of colonization and globalization in the region have rightfully sown distrust of global institutions and those of the Global North. This compounds the distrust of the name “cooperative,” as nominal “cooperatives'' were used as tools by foreign entities and governments during violent processes of colonization and globalization, which gravely misinformed many people as to what the cooperative model professes. This negative experience helped to shape the current 4th Principle of “Autonomy and Independence,” which endeavors to make clear that any cooperative must be autonomous from government and other institutions, if it is, in fact, a cooperative. All of these research initiatives have taken place within a world community scarred by exploitation and oppression that have sown distrust and disconnect, and these reports reflect that fact.
Overall, the concert of coopyouth reports over the past several years has exponentially increased the amount of statistical data and narrative observations available to those endeavoring to empower youth and their cooperatives. It is heartening to witness the reinterpretation of cooperative philosophy as inherently transformative - reaching beyond narrow notions of business, employment, and entrepreneurship; though in many cases research methods and frameworks do not yet adequately facilitate this worldview. In the 2012 Coopyouth Statement authored during the Closing Ceremonies of the International Year of Cooperatives at the United Nations, youth made a plea for more research into the realities of cooperative work for young people. Research efforts must continue, with an initial task in that work being the development of investigatory frameworks that accurately represent youth perspective, rather than that of a given institution, and are thereby authentically responsive to coopyouth needs.