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COLLEGE, LAGUNA: UP Los Baños has a beautiful campus. It is here where the College Consumers' Cooperative (College Coop) was born. Is it here where it is going to die this year? Historically, the Coop was the very first consumers' coop founded in the Philippines. The date: 20 October 1916. Somehow, this repeated history elsewhere, as the very first cooperative in the world was a consumers' cooperative founded in England in 1844 ( zadruga.obz.hr ). That is why the Coop is celebrating its 100th year this 2016. In fact, the cooperative movement in the Philippines arrived with the Americans at the beginning of their occupation of the islands (Jo Balucanag-Bitonio, 12 July 2012, slideshare.net ). Cooperatives were advocacies of the missionary and religious groups and programs of government agencies designed to help the people especially in the rural areas. It was Commonwealth Act 2508 (Agriculture Credit Association Act) that provided regulations for the creation of cooperatives

COLLEGE, LAGUNA: This used to be the happy College Consumers' Cooperative canteen at the campus of the Cow College, otherwise known as University of the Philippines College of Agriculture (UPCA), otherwise known as UP Los Baños (UPLB). As students, we knew it simply as Coop . We sometimes ate our meals there, sometimes our snacks. We bought our school supplies there, including blue books. Now it's history, the Coop I mean, because UPLB does not seem to treasure history. After 100 years, the Coop cannot hold office there anymore. UP Lady President Emerlinda Roman, who is a product of UP Los Baños, terminated the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the Coop and the University of the Philippines (UP) System in 2009, alleging violations of the terms of the MOA. No amount of appeal to the chancellors – first, Luis Rey Velasco, then Rex Victor Cruz, then Fernando Sanchez Jr – would change UP's mind about saying goodbye to the Coop. Goodbye to all that! Taken just this June, the

MANILA: You are looking at the image of a folded year-2000 flyer on the oldest consumers' cooperative in the Philippines, which we simply called Coop when we were students in the late 1950s and early 1960s at the University of the Philippines' College of Agriculture in Los Baños, Laguna. This flyer was prepared by the Education & Training Committee: Rosalinda P Garcia (Chair), Avelina M Salcedo (Vice Chair), Sonia B Maristela (1st Secretary), Hosanna H Espanto (2nd Secretary), and Winifrida D Medina (Member). Thank you, Ms Garcia. The first 2 paragraphs of the flyer give us just a little bit of history of the Coop: The first consumers' cooperative established in the Philippines is the College Consumers' Cooperative. It was organized on 20 October 1916 by administrators, professors, employees, and campus residents of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture in Los Baños, Laguna. It was initially named the Agricultural Cooperative Company and started