WARSAW, Poland — For his vision and continued mission to help build Poland's credit union system, Mike Mercer, president/CEO of the Georgia Credit Union Affiliates, recently received the country's highest honor for a foreign national.
Mercer was presented with the Knight's Cross by Sen. Andrzej Stelmachowski on behalf of the president of the Republic of Poland during the country's annual credit union meeting in Warsaw in late June. Stelmachowski is one of the most prominent and senior figures of the Polish political scene and was the first noncommunist Speaker of the Senate after Poland regained its freedom in 1989. The award is the highest recognition that the president awards to foreign national, non-governmental officials for exceptional work connected with Poland and its people. One of the most prominent nominees of this award from the past was Queen Elizabeth II.
Mercer was very instrumental in forming the Georgia-Polish Credit Union Partnership Program after meeting in 1992, when he and Gzregorz Bierecki, president of the National Association of Cooperative and Savings Credit Unions met at a WOCCU meeting.
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Gzregorz was working on the formulation of the present day credit union system in Poland. There was a crying need for alternative financial services for the newly liberated citizens of Poland and credit unions were an extremely attractive solution to this need, GCUA said. With the focus on cooperative financial services, member ownership, and one member, one vote the credit union concept was the "right fit."
Through interaction and conversations over the next two years between Gzregorz and Mercer, GCUA sent technical assistance in 1994. This technical assistance helped provide assistance in the decision making process for strategies in the design of the Polish credit union payments system.
This assistance was the beginning of the formal process of building the Georgia-Polish Credit Union Partnership Program. On May 12, 1995, formal signing of a partnership agreement took place at the Georgia Credit Union Affiliates annual meeting in Atlanta.
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