ABCUL Forum Host its First Event in Roadmap to World Council’s 2022 Conference

Tuesday 23 January 2024

This week, over sixty ABCUL members joined a virtual 2-hour event welcoming expert speakers from across the global credit union movement sharing their stories and views on a range of diverse topics relevant to the movement.

Due to the postponement of the World Council of Credit Union’s annual conference event, which was to take place in Glasgow this year. ABCUL’s North-East, Yorkshire and Humber Forum have organised five educational events which will lead up to the re-arranged date for World Council’s flagship event in Glasgow 2022.

Member of the Forum and Financial Inclusion Officer at Bradford District Credit Union, Ian Brewer said: “Due to the delays, we thought it was important to work with ABCUL to create an exciting roadmap and invite speakers from across the world to build excitement to the global credit union event next year.”

This week’s event was called ‘We Are Community’ with a focus on:

• Community Development Credit Unions
• Community Finance Post Covid – International Perspectives
• New Generation of Community Leaders

The event welcomed representatives from the national trade body for community development credit unions in the US, Inclusiv.

Speaking to ABCUL members at the event this week, Pablo DeFilippi, SVP of Membership and Network Engagement, at Inclusiv said: “We are thankful for this opportunity to share our experience in the community development and financial inclusion space. These topics are not only relevant to the US or UK, but the entire world.

“The massive number of people who are financially excluded are prevented from accessing critical asset-building tools. That barrier has an economic cost to the individuals and also to the communities where they live. Credit unions were created to fill this gap in the market place and that’s what we’re seeing now.

“Credit unions are the ultimate community development engine. We look forward to expanding the growing collaboration between Inclusiv and ABCUL to foster the growth of the community development credit union movement on both sides of the pond.”

Rene Vargas Martínez, Senior Program Officer, Inclusiv added: “We are so grateful to ABCUL for providing opportunities for credit unions on both sides of the pond to share and learn from each other. One of the main takeaways from the “We Are Community session” was that no matter where you are, or what the economic situation is, serving the underserved is an engine of collective prosperity and driver for credit union growth.”