By Lisa Freeman, Managing Editor
HUANUCO, Peru–What can a Third World country teach a First World country? Plenty, it turns out.
“We’re really not doing any teaching on this sojourn,” said Mary Cunningham, CEO of USA FCU, San Diego, who is one of seven women touring Peru and Chile as part of the World Council of Credit Unions’ Women’s Leadership Credit Union Engagement Program. Cunningham spoke to Credit Union Journal just as the group was getting ready to board a plane to fly back to Lima from Huanuco and before heading to Chile later this week.
Witnessing the intense poverty contrasted with the natural beauty of South America has its own lessons. “The people are deeply impoverished, but you can see this look of deep contentment on their faces. They are happy, and they are healthy,” Cunningham related.
But just as significant is the role women are playing in helping to beat back the relentless poverty. “It’s amazing to see these women, to see how they really are the instigators,” she said, describing several different co-ops that have been started by and are run by women. “They are so resourceful and so hopeful. They get a cooperativa started, and then they get their children involved, and their husbands involved, and it becomes a family enterprise and a village enterprise.”
Among the cooperatives the WOCCU group visited was one that grows flowers to sell to florists. At another stop, the group met with local women who are small business owners of microenterprises that included some shops, as well as a knitting cooperative. “These women are amazing entrepreneurs,” Cunningham commented. “And they have taken the concept of cooperation to a different level. They meet weekly to support each other. They pray together. It is just amazing to see what they have accomplished and how they work together. You see the hope and the self-reliance building and confidence building, and it gives you hope.”
And there were more practical lessons to be learned, as well, such as how the lending relationship works in the country. “They’re given a small loan, and they make payments every week. Then when the loan is paid off, they can get a larger loan,” she explained.
Additionally, new products and services are carefully vetted before they are offered–something U.S. credit unions definitely could from, Cunningham suggested. “They took us through their value chain, and it’s a very methodical analysis they use to determine if a particular venture will work,” she said. “We could really this. A lot of credit unions in the U.S., we offer a product or service because someone else is offering it, instead of doing a thorough analysis to see if it makes sense to offer it to our own members. They do a very careful analysis for every singe product and service before they decide to offer it.”
To read the other stories in this series, click on the related links at right.
