WASHINGTON — Credit union leaders and executives celebrated someof their industry's efforts to help students and immigrants bettertheir financial lives at the National Credit Union Foundation's2010 Wegner Awards dinner. The foundation makes the awards eachyear in conjunction with CUNA's Governmental AffairsConference.

This year's awards recognized key industry leaders Dick Heins,retired CEO of CUNA Mutual Group, and Dick Ensweiler, president ofthe Texas Credit Union League, but much of the evening's energycame from the recognition given to Biz Kid$ as the year'soutstanding program and the $1.8 billion HarborOne Credit Union'sMulticultural Banking Center.

Biz Kid$ is an award winning television series, underwritten bycredits unions nationwide, that offers lessons to students onpersonal finance and practical economics that parents can use athome and teachers can use in classrooms. HarborOne's MultiCulturalBanking Center in an effort the credit union launched in 2007 to,at first, help local immigrants keep their homes in the face of theongoing mortgage and foreclosure crisis that later became anoverall financial education and training effort as well.

John Annaloro, president of the Washington State Credit UnionLeague led a team of representatives from credit unions and theshow itself to accept the recognition. He kicked off the awardswith some pungent remarks about how important good financialeducation has become. The WCUL and Washington State Credit UnionFoundation had taken a lead role in co-coordinating the nationalfund raising effort to support the program.

Can there be any question that if we had more of this sorts offinancial education in place, fewer consumers would have been takenin by the bad loans and financial dealings that led us to today'scrisis, Annaloro asked, referring at one point to the sorts oflending that banks had been doing as “swill.”

John Blake, CEO of HarborOne, gave a moving and funny account ofhow his credit union moved cautiously at first into what was a verynew and unexplored venture in the MultiCultural Banking Center.

“When we started this program, we had no idea where it wasgoing,” Blake said, recalling that after only about six months intothe having started the center, he faced a series of interestedquestions about it from other CEOs attending a meeting of theFederal Reserve in Boston. “What I said to those people at thattime was see us in two years after we have figured out what we aredoing, because at this point we were afraid we were going to walkinto a door and hurt ourselves with this program.”

Blake recalled when the credit union started the program,Brockton was the leading city in the commonwealth for foreclosuresand that only 5% of people who tried to use foreclosure mitigationto keep their homes actually succeeded. Now, after the centerhaving been built and staffed from the credit union and a number oflocal nonprofit partners, that number has climbed to 66%. Blakedescribed the experience of building, launching and managing thecenter to have been a “transforming” one for the credit union. “Itenergized the entire staff,” he said. “It brought us back to ourroots in 1917 when the credit union was founded to help the poor inthe great city of Brockton.”

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