Our History

The people of Saint Lucia, like people in most countries, have always had traditional ways of working together for mutual benefit – the sou sou and coupe-de-main being among the most popular. However, organized co-operation in the form of a registered cooperative society was first practiced among farmers through the formation of Agricultural Credit Societies around 1916. By all accounts, those societies were short lived. Between then and now, cooperative activity of one form or another has been undertaken by different groups of people including farmers, fishermen, craftsmen/women, teachers, policemen, consumers, civil servants, trade unionists, taxi-drivers, tradesmen and students. 

​Organized cooperative activity resumed in the 1940’s with the intervention of the British colonial Office, through a Memorandum on Co-operative Development from the Secretary of State for the Colonies. The memorandum requested the territories to adopt Co-operative legislation where this did not exist and Saint Lucia was the first British Colony in the Caribbean to have enacted such legislation. That happened during the period 1946 to 1948.