CARIBBEAN CONFEDERATION OF CREDIT UNIONS
53rd Annual International Convention 2010
EMBRACING A NEW PARADIGM FOR THE ERADICATION OF POVERTY
In the last century or so, the Caribbean has excelled in several respects on the global stage, far surpassing its intended destiny of being the new Mediterranean “cockpit” of Europe.
CCCU is one of those major Caribbean success stories:
Over 375 member credit unions with substantial capitalization;
Over 2.2 million members in some 18 countries;
Over $700 million in savings;
Over 639 million in loans;
Over 3.3 billion in assets.
The movement has proven itself to be a major change agent and a vehicle for grassroots development; as the slogan says, demonstrating in concrete terms “the power of people helping people succeed.” It has been the cornerstone of the people’s growing consciousness of the power of savings and thrift, the tradition of self help and cooperatives, and access to credit and capital through loans revolving to themselves and their families.
Its success bears evidence to the merits of a new paradigm for the eradication of poverty, one that pursues development differently from the old model of mishandled foreign aid, top down oligarchic vision of development and marginalization of the poor in matters of social, economic and political decision making.
It has defined a niche in the English and Dutch-speaking Caribbean and developed a level of expertise based on a clear vision and philosophy for the reduction of poverty and the enhancement of opportunities for ordinary people to determine their own destiny through savings, cooperation, investment and entrepreneurship.
My intention then is not to preach to the choir. The focus of these remarks today is not how you can improve on what you are already doing with such panache in Caricom, nor how the global challenge of poverty across the developing countries of the world can be confronted.
The Challenge to CCCU:
Rather, it is an invitation to look beyond the Anglophone Caribbean with a specific agenda to expand into new African descendant communities across the Caribbean Basin on a two-fold mission:
To lend your experience and expertise to our neighbors in the areas of: human motivation, capacity building and technical assistance; access to credit and financing, and to increase the economic activity of the CCCU to unprecedented levels.
The prospects for success in this venture are based on four positive factors in the sub-region; viz. population size, cultural assets, market potential and local physical and natural resources.
There are hundreds of thousands of African descendant peoples living on the Caribbean–Atlantic coasts of Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala who are of Caribbean ancestry, (whether Creoles or Garifuna), who are bilingual or even trilingual (English, English Creole, Spanish, Garifuna), as well as hispanophone Africans dispersed in communities across the Caribbean Sea.
Demographics of African descendants:
Latin America generally 150 million
Non-hispanic Caribbean 14.4 million
Costa Rica 645,000
Guatemala 246,000
Honduras 630,000
Nicaragua 396,000
Panama 448,000
This African descendant population in the Western Caribbean has strong historical, linguistic and cultural links with our Northen and Eastern Caribbean community that have hitherto been unexplored for ist social, cultural and economic possibilities.
Furthermore, the synergy of the concept of the New Paradigm for the Eradication of Poverty and the philosophy and praxis of the Credit Union movement is such that this conversation takes on historic proportions in our common pursuit of sustainable development for our target populations.
The reality of poverty is glaring in the discriminated populations of African descendants, indigenous peoples and their marginalized communities in these countries.
A USAID Report on Latin America (2004) states,
· Roughly 44% of Latin Americans are now poorer-- up from 40% in 1999,
· 20% suffer extreme poverty;
· Unemployment has risen to more than 9%, higher than the 1980s level.
· The same report indicates that 79% of Hondurans live in poverty;
· Unemployment and underemployment in Nicaragua runs close to 50%;
· The Caribbean coastal city of Colon which is 90% of African descent and West Indian heritage, has an unemployment rate of about 40%.
Undeniably, these populations are challenged with conditions of:
· unemployment, poverty, and lack of access and opportunity;
· lack of structured action plans for community based participation; and
· lack of awareness of projections for local, provincial, national and international sustainable economic activity.
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The New Paradigm vision for the region is predicated on some basic facts and principles:
(i) Firstly, the old development models of the North, the UN sponsored Aid programs of the last century, and even CAFTA, have all failed this particular population.
They have not produced the desired outcomes of growth and effective liberation from the stranglehold of poverty anticipated by donors even with the best of intentions. Their top-down ideology, the level of self interest inherent in the administrative policy, and the incongruent methodologies on the ground that favored certain sectoral preferences, undermined the pursuit of development.
(ii) Secondly, there exists an invisible majority of African descendants, indigenous, mestizo and other discriminated ethnic groups that outnumber the privileged and entrenched oligarchic and related populations of those countries;
(iii) These populations own resources of which, very often, they do not fully understand the true value and potential:
· Prime areas of coastal land, owned or occupied,
but used only for subsistence farming;
§ Skills in the creation of cultural products;
§ Environmental assets and water supply
They have within their grasp untapped resources and skills, that can be channeled into the creation of new wealth, new business partnerships, and new jobs. They can utilize their numbers to create products for community use and trade among themselves and with others, within and outside the region.
They have people of like ancestry and culture within the Diasporas of the North who are potential partners, investors, and traders with whom they can do profitable business:
· 40 million African descendants in the US and Canada alone;
· A Caribbean and Central American population that contributes close to $10 billion of economic activity in the US alone each year.
What the New Paradigm does is fourfold:
§ It engages local academic institutions as partners in the implementation of capacity building programs, technical assistance, technology exchange, project feasibility evaluation for submission to financing institutions;
§ It involves the entire community in a participatory process of master planning for sustainable development, which entails community resource mapping, research, consultation, project identification and documentation in a registry of feasible economic projects;
§ It opens up access to credit and financing for bundled feasible projects, while making connections with viable investor partners, thus offering new and meaningful opportunities for successful business operations and economic mobility, to defeat the self-discrimination and antisocial behavior that have tarnished the image of many African descendant communities.
§ It explores prospects for market organization, market penetration and market expansion beyond the local environs to promote viable, but fair, two-way trade,
South-South and North-South.
How then can CCCU benefit from a major role in the New Paradigm?
There is a wide open scope for the movement in the sub-region. While there is a marked expansion in credit unions in the target countries, none of that growth reaches the black communities.
In Panama, for example, cooperatives mushroomed from around 2008 when 89 new cooperatives, mainly credit unions, were established in one year, an increase of 20% over 2007. Similarly, in 2009, Panama saw a growth of 18% in cooperatives generally; Guatemala, 12% specifically in credit unions; and Costa Rica 8%. Yet none of that development took place in any black community.
The only black financial institution in Panama or the rest of Central America for that matter (with the exception of Belize) is a sole credit union established in Colon City by West Indian immigrants who worked in the Panama Canal. La Cooperative San Cristobal has grown impressively in recent years, and now owns remarkable assets, but still remains very localized to the Province of Colon. They have expressed an openness to pursue affiliation with the New Paradigm access to finance Network as well as the CCCU, and a willingness to collaborate in taking the movement to other African descendant communities across the sub-region.
The scope for solid funding and investment is wide open in the ten major afrodescendant communities of Central America. First, thre is need for a Development Fund of $5 million
which will generate $200 million of new economic activity (20 million dollars of feasible projects per Province) for those 10 Provinces in Central American countries with significant Afro Latino populations.
Secondly, there is scope for a Master Planning and Capacity Building Investment Fund of $500,000 for each one of 10 Provinces, that will then generate $20 million of Business activity each. A total of $200 million in the region.
This is not being proposed only in a spirit of philanthropy; it is a duly considered economic proposal that can take CCCU to another level of business activity and pioneer importance in the sustainable development of the wider Caribbean Basin. The invitation is formally issued; the New Paradigm partners are committed to new collaborative efforts with indigenous financial institutions from across the Caribbean Sea. Together we can confidently declare to the world, that where the old paradigm has failed, we have the sense of purpose and the will to determine our own destinies building from the base up; people helping people and unleashing the power of a sleeping giant of humble folks.
J a george irish
6/28/10
St Maarten
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