DES MOINES, Iowa — The $8 million Village Credit Union is the recipient of the National Credit Union Foundation's fifth innovation grant this year, the foundation has announced. The credit union will use the just over $24,000 grant to help launch an effort to help Spanish-speaking home buyers called the Latino Real Estate Coalition.

"The Latino Real Estate Coalition will address the need for ethical practices among minorities and serve as an informal policing of best practices," explained Debbie Whittie, CEO of Village Credit Union. "It will provide education within the Hispanic community and eventually other minority communities, invoke better communications between real estate professionals and their clients, and call for stronger partnerships between mortgage industry professionals seeking to break down home-buying barriers for Hispanics."

The foundation said that among the Coalition's goals would be to educate Latinos about the importance of their credit scores and to help improve them; to build a coalition of real estate and mortgage professionals familiar with the needs of Latino home buyers and to establish a best practices report which will document lessons learned in serving these buyers.