I-Café Pilipinas, as the national network of internet café owners, operators and associations in the Philippines, strives to empower the stakeholders in the conduct of their business and the formation of Pilipinas I-Café Marketing Cooperative is one initiative that the organization will launch on July 28, 2010 from 9 am to 6 pm at the Seminar Room A and B of the Philippine Trade Training Center, CCP Complex, Buendia Ave Corner Roxas Boulevard, Pasay City. The theme of the launching will be “Walk the Talk: Putting Advocacies to Work in Providing ICT Opportunities  at the Community Level”

The Pilipinas I-Cafe Marketing Cooperative is the result of advocacy and planning work by the people behind I-Cafe Pilipinas in its quest to bring about substantial changes in the internet cafe industry in the country. The organization believes that a vital component of empowerment of its stakeholders would be providing the means in which they would have direct access to vital ICT products, technologies and services that they would need in order to improve their business conditions. A sense of ownership through a cooperative movement is the vehicle for vision to take shape.

At the outset, Pilipinas I-Café Marketing Cooperative has been granted a non-exclusive distributorship status by Redfox Technologies Inc.. The cooperative’s core activity will be the development and management of sales channels for Redfox products using the internet cafes and other community based networks as its main access centers.  It hopes to provide income opportunities to ICT practitioners at the community level by providing them access to computer hardware, software, trainings and business solutions.

The move to form a multipurpose cooperative for the i-café industry actually started during the Idea Camp held at Philippine Trade Training Center (PTTC) Conference Rooms A and B, Roxas Boulevard corner Gil Puyat Avenue, Pasay City last April 27, 2010. I-Café Pilipinas takes the initiative in forming the cooperative by virtue of its being a national advocacy organization representing the interests of stakeholders in the Internet café industry of the country. Also, the proposed multipurpose cooperative is aimed to be national in scope with its membership opened to all interested parties with common bond to the i-café industry who are mostly affiliated or linked to the organization.

The next step in the formation of the cooperative was immediately scheduled after the Idea Camp and a meeting attended by twenty-four (24) individuals who are committed to be the cooperators was held last May 8, 2010 at the Redfox Conference Room, 4th Floor, Golden Building, 1465 E. Rodriguez Avenue, Quezon City. The attendees were fully briefed with the nature of the cooperative to be formed, the products and services that it will offer to its members and how it will be organized and manned in order to achieve its goal of having economic empowerment for the stakeholders in the i-café industry.

The Pre-Membership Education Seminar (PMES) will be the next activity that the individuals committed to the formation of the cooperative will attend. This requirement of the law governing the registration and operation of a cooperative will be scheduled as soon as possible with a representative from the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA) conducting it. The financial and organizational responsibilities of the would-be cooperators will be decided during the PMES and the filing of the Articles of Cooperation with the CDA will conclude the registration stage of the cooperative.