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What is the Youth Credit Union Network?
The Federation's Youth Credit Union network is a group of community development credit unions that have a special interest in serving their youth constituents. These credit unions share ideas, work together, and do collaborative programming.
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Federation Youth show off their completed work at a volunteer activity in New Orleans
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What is a Y-C-U-P?
Youth Membership
Leadership Development
Financial Literacy
Fun |
Job Training
Networking
Opportunity
Friends |
A Youth Credit Union Program can be all of this and much more. Federation Member programs provide many different opportunities to youth in their communities. Some have special youth deposit programs, others leadership development, financial literacy and job opportunities. Some even have their own independent branches, run completely by youth. Whats ties all these different programs together is their commitment to helping younger generations through inclusive programs designed to make youth stakeholders -even owners- of their own programs.
Why Should Your Credit Union Start a YCUP?
Community development credit unions are vitally concerned with providing young people with educational and leadership-training opportunities. These programs help young people and also create a strong, knowledgeable group of future advocates for the credit union movement as a whole.
Who YCUPs?
The Federation's network of youth programs reaches both urban and rural areas. Programs serve a wide range of youth, typically from elementary school through high school graduation. Most CDCU youth programs offer special youth savings accounts and financial literacy programming. Some have ambitious leadership development programs including training in credit union operations and fundraising and allow the youth to run their own program. 1st Delta Federal Credit Union in Marks, MS and Alternatives FCU in Ithaca, NY, for example, offer entrepreneurship training where young members operate small stores to raise funds for their programs' operations.
How can the Federation help?
Since 1992, the Federation has aided credit unions in starting and operating youth credit union programs. We have experience working with our network of youth credit unions and running youth conferences as a part of our Annual Conference for the last 10 years. In tandem with our members programs we can provide information and resources on fundraising, youth engagement, management and financial literacy. The Federation can help you build relationships for the future of your credit union.
To learn more about CDCU YCUPs, view program profiles by clicking here.
History of the Federation's Youth Credit Union Network
The Federation originally began in the early nineties working with youth credit union programs because of the knowledge that youth are the future--both of the credit union movement and our country's communities. This desire led the Federation to implement the development of youth credit unions around the country that would help increase business and leadership skills of youth ages seven through 17 years as they learned first-hand about the working of a credit union and, more generally, about the financial industry.
The underlying premise for youth development through credit union experience is similar to that of adult credit unions- that the youth credit unions should be owned and operated by young people who serve on the board of directors and hold positions as managers, loan officers, and front-line staff. YCUPs expose the younger members of a community to concepts of saving, thrift, lending, and responsible debt, and provide valuable pre-employment experience. The YCUPs developed with the help of the Federation were shown to successfully address both the financial skills and employment training needs of under-served youth.
Since inception of the program, the Federation has sponsored youth conferences, and helped our member CDCUs to develop youth credit union programs. The Youth Credit Union Network today plans the yearly Youth Credit Union Conferences and provides CDCUs and other credit unions with the resoures and experience to help them start a successful youth program.
More Information
For more information about our youth programs please contact Pamela Owens, Director of Education and Training, at powens@cdcu.coop or 212.809.1850 x215.
