When the banks left New York's Lower East Side in the 1980′s, the neighborhood reacted with a breakthrough idea: Let's skip the middleman and take care of each other. They pooled their money and the Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union was born.

This is the story of credit unions all the way back to industry's beginning: regular people taking a "do it yourself" approach to solve seemingly insurmountable environmental pressures and creating something new.

The moral is simple: When people lose access to a fundamental need, we find creative ways to restore that access.

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