Harsh Mukeshbhai Sanghani was elected president of the International Cooperative Alliance Youth Committee (ICA YC) at its Annual Plenary Meeting.
The meeting was held last week at the Co-op Group’s head office, One Angel Square, in conjunction with the 2025 Festival of Cooperatives.
Sanghani, 20, from Gujarat, India, succeeds Ana Aguirre, who was elected president of the ICA YC in 2022 and announced her decision to stand down in April.
“My journey in the international co-operative area started back in 2015 and I was incredibly lucky to find inspiring people that I not only admire at the professional level but can proudly call friends,” said Aguirre. “It is the international movement’s inspiration, sharing and strength that made me the co-operator and the person I am today. What a journey it has been.”
Sanghani, who will serve as president until the end of Aguirre’s term in 2026, told Co-operative News he was inspired to join the ICA Youth Committee after attending last year’s ICA Global Cooperative Conference in New Delhi.
“I saw young minds playing co-operative games, taking part in a Coopathon, and so many things were happening over there that gave me a spark of, why not? I should also join the ICA Youth Committee.”
Seeing Aguirre speak at the event was also an inspiration for him, he said.
“[To see that] a young mind from a different part of the globe could be there as a representative of a co-operative, I thought why not, I can also join her. So that was the spark that took me over here, and now I’m the president of the ICA YC. So of course, I would give first credit to Ana, and then to everyone else for this.”
In his candidacy statement, Sanghani said he was standing because he believes the future of the co-op movement lies in youth leadership that is “bold, inclusive, tech-savvy, and rooted in values”.
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“Over the last few years, I have witnessed how young people are eager to lead, yet are often left out of meaningful spaces. I want to change that,” he added.
During his presidency, Sanghani plans to draw on his previous experience as youth agriculture minister of Gujarat and leader of several youth-driven co-operative missions to build “a global youth co-operative platform where innovation, policy, sustainability, and entrepreneurship intersect”.
He plans to develop a Global Digital Cooperative Incubator to support youth-led co-op start-ups, launch a Youth Cooperative Leadership Academy with ICA’s regional and sectoral bodies, and a set up a Global Youth Cooperative Policy Forum to enable cross-border youth policymaking.
The ICA YC also welcomed its new executive committee member for Europe, Helena Gorroño, from the Basque Country, who was recently elected vice president of the Young European Cooperators Network.
The ICA YC Annual Plenary Meeting was part of the Festival of Cooperatives which took place in Manchester and Rochdale last week. Other activities that took place during the festival included the ICA General Assembly, tours of the Rochdale Pioneers Museum, and celebratory events marking the International Day of Cooperatives on 5 July.
This article was amended on 18 August to correct the duration of Sanghani’s term as IYC president
