Cooperazione Internazionale (COOPI) is an international Italian NGO established in 1965. Since then COOPI has been undertaking activities to help and empower the poor and needy in different countries. COOPI Ethiopia started its operation in 1995 and its activities include water resources development, Food Security, Human and Veterinary Health, Education, Agriculture, Hygiene and Sanitation Promotion & Awareness and Capacity Building.
COOPI based on the grant secured from Italian Development Agency is currently implementing a 15-months project titled Emergency initiative in response to the humanitarian emergency caused by the El Niño climate phenomenon AID 11212. The project will be implemented in Afar region: Zone 2, Afdera, Berhale and Megale woredas
On 15 April 1965 Father Barbieri founded COOPI. This was to be the start of a journey spanning fifty years during which COOPI and Italian international cooperation, in all their various aspects, have expanded and transformed themselves. Yet COOPI’s story begins before 1965 – in 1961, in fact, when Vincenzo Barbieri, a young Jesuit priest, was sent by his superiors to study at the Faculty of Theology in Lyon, France, with a view to going to Chad as a missionary. Barbieri found the cultural environment in France to be much more lively and open than the one he experienced in provincial Italy in the years prior to the Second Vatican Council. In Lyon he came into contact with international secular movements which had been engaged in voluntary work in developing countries for many years. In 1962, Barbieri turned down the opportunity to depart as a missionary himself and returned to Milan with the intention of training volunteers to depart for countries in the Global South. he introduced the secular component into missionary activities.
