The National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA) is the oldest not-for-profit cooperative development organization in the United States. NCBA’s CLUSA International program (CLUSA) is a dynamic organization with a mission to alleviate poverty through economic empowerment. With 60 years of successful, high-impact international development experience, CLUSA is a globally recognized leader in organizing people to help themselves and a thought leader in applying cooperative strategies to development. With a home office staff of 30 in Washington D.C., numerous professional expatriate staff and some 700 host country national professional and administrative staff, CLUSA designs and manages programs that are market oriented, achieving tangible results with realistic and responsible processes that ensure true, long-term sustainable development. The CLUSA team possesses a wealth of practical experience and demonstrated success in managing its diverse portfolio. 

Based on the seven cooperative principles, the “CLUSA Approach” asserts that the clients are the decision makers when it comes to confronting their communities’ most pressing development problems. Central to this approach is the empowerment of people to articulate, promote and manage sustainable, locally generated solutions. CLUSA focuses its development approach in results-driven programming across multiple sectors including Food Security and Agriculture, Natural Resource Management, Community Based Health and Democracy and Governance.