Asiapro Founder signs MOA with
Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa

Standing from L to R: Ray Canilao, Co-opWorks!; Gabriel Quemado II, President – Asiapro Cooperative; seated from L to R: Bernardo Villegas, Vice President – UA&P and President – De La Delegacion Filipina; Soc Canilao, Treasurer – Co-opWorks!; Jesus Maria Herrasti, President – Mondragon International; Leo Parma, Chairman for International Relations – Co-opWorks! and Founder – Asiapro Cooperative
Asiapro Cooperative recently helped put together a mutually beneficial partnership with Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa (MCC), the seventh largest business group in Spain. This momentous event transpired during the third edition of Spain – Philippines forum (Third Tribuna España – Filipinas) in Madrid last December 2007 where Asiapro Cooperative Founder Leo Parma and Mondragon International President Jesus Maria Herrasti signed a memorandum of understanding.

"MCC is the biggest business organization in the Basque country. With its many worker members, it diversified within 50 years of existence. That is something that we want to replicate in our own work or business environment. We established a partnership with them to see what we can learn and apply it to our local cooperative condition," said Parma.

MCC is a group of manufacturing and retail companies based in the Basque country and extended over the rest of Spain and abroad. It has 65 manufacturing subsidiaries in five continents – Europe, America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. As of 2006, it had a total sales of more than 13 billion Euros with a workforce of almost 84,000. MCC


Ray Canilao, Co-opWorks!; Gabriel Quemado II, President – Asiapro Cooperative; Soc Canilao, Treasurer – Co-opWorks!; Jesus Maria Herrasti, President – Mondragon International; Leo Parma, Chairman for International Relations – Co-opWorks! and Founder – Asiapro Cooperative
is the fruit of the sound vision of Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta. Founded in 1956, it is now the Basque Country's largest cooperative enterprise, the seventh largest business group in Spain. MCC's mission combines the basic objectives of a business competing in international markets with the use of democratic methods in its organization and with special emphasis on job creation, the promotion of its workers in human and professional terms and a commitment to the development of its social environment.

Asiapro is a member of the The Philippine Association of Self-Employed Workers Cooperatives (Co-opworks!) Inc., a prime example of worker cooperatives in the Philippines bonding together for a unified front. Currently, there are 14 primary cooperative members under Co-opworks!.

"Initially, it is about awareness, standards and exchange of learning opportunities through training, information sharing and international cooperation and understanding. So we encourage our member cooperatives to go to

(Standing from L to R: Ray Canilao, Co-opWorks!; Soc Canilao, Treasurer – Co-opWorks!; Jesus Maria Herrasti, President – Mondragon International; Leo Parma, Chairman for International Relations – Co-opWorks! and Founder – Asiapro Cooperative; Gabriel Quemado II, President – Asiapro Cooperative)
Mondragon for study tours and see first hand what they do. From there, we'll see if we can link in terms of business," said Parma.

According to Asiapro Founder Mr. Leo Parma, local cooperatives can learn valuable lessons from the MCC business-model marked by Mondragon's experience in terms of governance and how they apply the cooperative principles to their very large network of cooperatives and corporate entities. Asiapro pioneered the organization of non-regular workers in the Philippines. It is a multi-purpose cooperative that takes care of providing its worker-owners non-regular jobs in cooperating companies. Under this model, worker-owners organize themselves and form a cooperative enterprise. They become self-employed co-owners of the cooperative and they engage in outsourced assignments with the cooperative serving as the contracting party. Today, Asiapro has almost 25,000 worker-owners and about 200 clients.