Succession planning is often one of the more overlooked and undepreciated parts of Caribbean culture. Even though we are naturally innovative – we tend to stick with what we have more faithfully than our future can afford. However, the good news is that Credit Unions are a little different. As a people-first movement, there is a certain survival instinct that pulls us toward our younger people. In this article we’ll recount youth engagement in Barbados and then we’ll look to draw inspiration on how we can improve from a case study on Irish credit unions.
Barbadian Credit Unions Do Well With The Youth
Our position with young members is pleasing. Credit Unions in Barbados have always done a good job of creating empowering initiatives for parents to ingratiate their children with financial literacy.
For instance, most Credit Unions have junior accounts with little to no fees and encouraging interest rates to move parents to begin financial activity with their children from a young age. In addition, there exists important commercial products like back to school loans that help children to benefit from their parents being credit union members.
Some other tangible examples of where local Credit Unions have engaged younger members are:
- Establishing thrift clubs to teach young members more about saving
- Organizing school tours to credit union board rooms
- Heavily sponsoring youth based events
- Creating summer work programmes for increased exposure
Where Have We Fallen Down?
While we do some things well, there are some obvious areas where we can do better. One area where we struggle as a region, is how we present information. There is a lot to be gained by packaging information in a such a way that is more accessible to a younger audience. This is especially true these days, where attention spans are short and hotly contested.
Additionally, there’s certainly more that we can do when it comes to allowing younger members opportunities for direct involvement with credit union activity. To provide some scope as to what kind of initiatives we can look toward from the future – we will look to the Irish.
Irish Credit Unions Engage Their Youth Spectacularly
The Irish are amongst some of the best in the world in consistently attracting young credit union members and talent for their workforce. At least, according to a case study by Executve Director at Saskatchewan Coop Association, Victoria Morris. So instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, we’ll look into what she believes makes the Irish so successful.
In the 90’s, Credit Unions in Ireland noticed that the membership population was aging and that younger people were needed to ensure the survival of the movement. In doing so, the Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU) moved to establish a Youth Policy Task Force in the early 2000’s.
This task force would go on to set up a myriad of opportunities for youth engagement, targeting members as young as 4 years all the way to 35 years old. We can only look at 2 of these initiatives for the sake of brevity but you can read the full list at:
https://sask.coop/about-us/blog/item/26-why-irish-credit-unions-are-so-good-at-youth-engagement-and-what-canadian-co-operatives-can-learn-from-their-approach
Gr8 Saver’s Week
This is a national financial youth education initiative. For the duration of the week each Credit Union shares actionable tips on saving and financial plans for their future.
The idea is based on a self-commissioned survey where the ILCU found that 70% of teens receive pocket money from their parents. Of those teens, 3 in 4 save approximately one-third of their pocket money. What an opportunity to share a finance lesson!
Secondary School Credit Unions
This initiative aimed to have sub credit union branches attached to each secondary school in Ireland. The branch was meant to be run by students in the school and overseen by Youth Officers.
The League chief executive at the time stated:
We see it as an important way of teaching young people the value of money, of saving and of social capital. Credit unions are run by the community by volunteers for the community”
What Can We Learn?
There were 24 initiatives that Irish established to target the younger members of their society. This shows us the kind of consistent and intensive effort that is required to attract new members
Tying Everything Together
In Barbados, we have a good foundation that we can build on regarding youth involvement. The social media channels are already in place and the desire to sustain the movement is alive and well. All we need is a little creative boost from the outside and some elbow grease.
Some final action points from the Irish case study included aims to:
- Foremost, develop a greater awareness of credit unions within young people
- Boost the image of cooperatives through effective communication
- Promote more sustainable work opportunities for young people through cooperatives
- Foster and encourage entrepreneurship by enabling the right environments