EAST LANSING, Mich. — For the second year, Financial Health Credit Union is spearheading an effort to help credit unions better serve members with disabilities.
It's a big job. U.S. Census figures show there are more than 1.8 million people over the age of five with a disability just in Michigan. Some of those disabilities are obvious, many are not.
The education initiative, funded by the National Credit Union Foundation, is aimed at making credit unions more knowledgeable about communicating with people with handicaps, more familiar with technology that can help people with handicaps handle tasks such as completing loan applications, and more aware of the importance of accessible meetings.
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FHCU has been working with the Michigan Disability Rights Coalition to present the curriculum. The instructor is Aimee Stark, the coalition's program manager.
Adeline Metzler, FHCU executive vice president, notes the very title of a brochure promoting the project, "People First: Serving People with Disabilities," makes a point.
"It's important not to say 'disabled people.' Say 'people with disabilities.' That's putting the person first," Metzler says. She agrees it's like doctors and nurses constantly being prodded not to refer to "the appendectomy in Room 120," and instead realize the patient is more than the illness that brought them to the hospital.
Metzler says the sessions grew out of a long-term relationship between FHCU and the coalition. Last year people from various sites serving people with disabilities came to train-the-trainer sessions on the MoneySmart curriculum so they could teach their clients.
In the process of rolling out the Building Your Financial Future effort, they were asked to partner with a credit union in their area. Most of them did. Feedback indicated credit unions were interested in learning more about serving people with disabilities.
So this second year has involved outreach to credit unions. There are 16 credit unions partnered with sites serving the disabled. But the planners wanted to involve even more credit unions, and asked the Michigan Credit Union League to help sponsor and publicize the sessions.
In addition to a program at FHCU, gatherings have been offered at Bell Com Credit Union in Grand Rapids and Telcom Credit Union in Novi. On Oct. 1 Bel Com and FHCU will merge and become Option 1 Credit Union.
Some of the points brought out by Metzler include:
o Sooner or later, everybody is going to have a disability.
o Don't speak to people with disabilities differently than you would to other members.
o People with disabilities are not a population you can market to as you would many other demographic segments. They're part of the entire society in every area of the community and in a wide range of occupations and education.
"It's a mind-set," Metzler says. "You have to think about it, just as businesses had to be sensitized to include women and minorities in their advertising. You need to think about including people with disabilities in your marketing to show they're part of your field of membership." –[email protected]
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