The Contribution of Community-Based Credit Cooperatives to the Upliftment of the Quality of Life of its Members: An Evaluation

Abstract

This research sought to determine the contributions of community-based credit cooperatives in five (5) cities in the National Capital Region namely, Quezon City, Paranaque, Taguig, Pasig, and Makati where most of these successful coops of this kind are situated, to the upliftment of the quality of life of its members. The findings of the study revealed that these cooperatives indeed make a significant contribution to the improvement of the quality of life of coop members. Members and officers alike for the coops surveyed manifested the same positive results. Having the cited positive results, the answers to the statement of the problem and sub-problems were thus clearly and elaborately presented with numbers, figures, and tables such that, these showed without a doubt that being a member of the coop or being its officer bring great benefits in terms of social, political, cultural, and economic upliftment. Interestingly, one notable finding of the study was that the lower educated people tended to exalt more their cooperative than their higher-educated coop members especially in terms of social upliftment. The high school and vocational attainers were the ones very vocal in citing the cooperative role in their social enhancement. The recommendation that the study can make is that cooperatives should be replicated more in the other locales of the city, municipality, or province. As the study further highlighted, the cooperative is the great equalizer as no matter how big one’s capital is in the coop, he or she counts only as “one vote”.