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SLEMCOOP is a cooperative among the government employees from the national and local government units of Southern Leyte. The present area of operation is the province of Southern Leyte. And laying the ground work for expansion as seen in the widening  area of operations in the newly  amended articles of cooperation to the visayan region.

SLEMCoop History

The operations of Southern Leyte Employee’s Multi-Purpose Cooperative took shape in 1984 when 50 employees of the provincial government pooled in P64, 000 for initial assets to serve the credit needs of fellow employees at the time.

There were 15 coop members who drafted the Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws in 1986 and it has served as the basis of SLEMCOOP’s current services and programs.

According to its vision statement, SLEMCOOP members envision themselves as a strong and viable cooperative – one that is responsive to the changing and varying needs of its members who are unified by a common aspiration, which is to promote cooperativism and to achieve total human development.

In offering to coop members the most basic services of a cooperative, which are savings and credit, SLEMCOOP was able to pave the way and install its foundations. By 1996, the membership has grown to 556 and in the following year that marked the onset of its housing program, its assets scaled up to P17M. Its revenue for that year will become two-fold in 1998, from P1.9M to P4.2M.

The mortuary program, branded as CoopCare, became the first of a series of other services aside from savings and credit that SLEMCOOP started providing its members with the intention of giving members access to financial capability in times of family need.

Next was the health care program, which SLEMCOOP started implementing in the late 80’s. Branded as Coop HealthCare, aspiring SLEMCOOP members learn during pre-membership seminars about the program that extends financial assistance when a coop member or a beneficiary is hospitalized. Coop HealthCare would later on, starting in year 2000, include out patients who have undergone eye cataract and cyst removals in its benefits.

An infusion of capital that came from the Department of Trade and Industry enabled SLEMCOOP to set up its livelihood program in the early ‘90s, which was fueled by intentions to develop aspiring local entrepreneurs and sustain the existing ones in their income generating activities such as longaniza and ceramic making.

In 1992, SLEMCOOP created an incentive program that gives cash benefits to employee members when they have retired from government service. The program was called COOP Retirement, bearing the COOP trademark that SLEMCOOP usually anoints on its pilot programs. The benefit amount is computed based on the amount of their fixed deposits. The program even goes as far as giving cash gifts to retirees during their birthdays by basing the gift amount on the retirees’ fixed deposits in the coop.

By 1998, another growth was marked in the coop’s membership. The number has reached to 736 employees from different government agencies. By this time, SLEMCOOP members were not only taking part in the savings and credit operations of the cooperative, but were availing of its mortuary, healthcare, livelihood, and retirement programs as well.

Ten years after, SLEMCOOP would have expanded beyond its existing programs, and the number of SLEMCOOP members grown to 1, 365. Some of them would find shelter for their families in COOP Village Ibarra after availing of the COOP Housing Program.

NOW ON ITS 25 YEARS OF SERVICE!

After 25 years in operation, SLEMCOOP turned its small  has beginnings into a more solid and more capable enterprise, one that is geared for the fulfillment of its vision.