He was active also as president of the Institute of international Research Archive Disarmament, working hard on topics like peace, solidarity and the way to disarmament.

After his untimely death, Legacoop established the Ivano Barberini Foundation, centre of historical, economic and social research for the promotion of cooperation as a way of development in contemporary society. Website: www.fondazionebarberini.it

“The cooperative movement is poorly and badly known in every part of the world, despite associating hundreds of millions of people. The cause of this doesn’t only lie in the tools and forms of communication that also have their importance, but rather in the fact that a dominant culture considers companies as a place for creating profit. In this vision, that is based on a dichotomy between Market (that has to produce wealth) and State Government (that has to reallocate it), there is no more space for a kind of company which was born and developed with the purpose of producing wealth and at the same time equally redistributing social benefits, such as the cooperatives”.

”Despite the 800 million worldwide members and the important, if not leadership, role in some sectors, cooperation remains a less well-known and understood form of enterprise than it is generally believed. Even in a country like ours- where it has more than 100 years of experience, an excellent role and, in some cases, at the top, making a significant contribution to GDP and above all to national employment- cooperation retains a reductive image, if not manipulated. A marginal presence in the scientific debate and in education, both in high school and university, has certainly contributed to this lack of sensitivity. Only in the last years the topic began to come out of the ambit of a narrow, although meritorious, circle of professionals and to interest an increasing number of scholars”.