By Brian Branch, CEO, World Council

When we look at the geopolitical issues that we see in the news every day, these are issues that have their roots at the community level. At the World Council, we see in so many countries around the globe communities turning to their credit unions to find solutions. It goes beyond basic financial services. Credit unions address the root drivers of instability. They support food security, help people earn their livelihood and finance jobs, help settle refugees into communities, and address the conditions that drive the migration of refugees— such as civil conflict and poverty. In doing so, credit unions provide economic and, therefore, political stability.

In the world today, 70 million people are displaced or refugees. There are really three legs to this stool.

First, where are these people coming from? People flee civil conflict, lack of opportunity or from poverty. For example, in Ukraine, we work with credit unions in a country that is experiencing a civil conflict, where most financial institutions have pulled out of the rural areas. These communities then turn to their credit unions. They ask the credit unions to finance farmers to get their crops in the fields and feed their families. They ask credit unions to finance their businesses and provide jobs for their young people.

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Twenty years ago, we saw very vibrant local economies and rural areas in Central America, colorful crafts and cottage industries. Today you do not find that because they cannot compete with cheap Chinese imports, or because the road infrastructure from the capital cities is so improved, that now better-quality, cheaper goods from the capital industries available. A decade ago, tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors started showing up at the U.S. border. The communities they left behind turned to their credit unions and asked the credit unions to find an economic path for their young people, so they could build a local future. World Council started working with credit unions to provide agricultural lending with much success. Still, it only generated so much employment. Then the communities asked, ‘Can you find ways to finance businesses, so our young people have jobs?

The mission is not about providing finance in a vacuum. The world has changed. The markets have changed. Part of the challenge is how do you connect these credit unions and their communities with market information about what the crop market potential is, and where to sell their crops? When we did connect them with better market information, it resulted in up to a 30% increase in household per capita income.

Secondly, we look at the communities into which the immigrants are arriving. Australian credit unions looked at immigration as a resource, a way to help new people settle in their rural communities, which needed trained professions, labor or children to attend their schools. So, credit unions worked with the state governments and local NGOs, as immigrants came into Australia to certify their professional capacity, match them with the labor demands or the community needs throughout Australia, and help them settle.

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We took those lessons to Latin America. As Venezuela was imploding, immigrants rushed to Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador. Initially, these refugees had professional experience and assets that were welcomed. But with time, people with fewer assets came and concerns arouse about the economic strife that can lead to civil conflict later. The communities, again, turned to their credit unions. It’s not just about financial services – it is about helping immigrants get legal certification so they can work, helping them get professional certification to practice their profession and helping to map their labor skills to job opportunities so they can work to support their families and their newfound communities.

Thirdly, what if you don't have credit unions? Earlier this year, World Council was asked by ex-U.S. military to go to Iraq and meet with the Kurds to provide a roadmap out of the refugee camps for the six million refugees in Kurdistan. These are people who have lost not only their homes and assets but suffered the loss of their families as a result of the war with ISIS. People who had lived in refugee camps in tents for five years, were signing leases for another four years. The average stay in a refugee camp around the world is 17 years. They asked us to create credit unions to give these people an economic path out of the refugee camps.

We found that developing a business plan was the easy part. The hard part was building trust in communities that were destroyed and for families whose members were killed or kidnapped. How do you start with something like that? They were very focused on recovering their family who had been held hostage by ISIS, so World Council started with supporting the recovery of family members and self-defense training among young women who have been held as captives. We saw the community starting to come together, beginning to interact with each other, and building that social network upon which we could build trust and, eventually, financial institutions.

World Council has seen immigration from perspectives of communities losing their young people, from the perspectives of communities receiving immigrants and refugees, and from the perspective of the camps themselves where credit unions do not yet exist. In all of these cases credit unions become a community catalyst to build economic stability and, therefore, political stability. Today’s global economy does not allow us to operate in a vacuum, and the experience we gain from taking a world view helps credit unions, in the U.S. and abroad, lead their communities in addressing the issues that can arise from worldwide immigration.