Consumer Action presents to credit unions

Consumer Action was invited to speak at the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) staff meeting in Nashville, TN in October about our financial empowerment initiatives, consumer education materials and training for community-based organizations.

The invitation came from NCUA's Office of Small Credit Union Initiatives, responsible for fostering credit union development and the effective delivery of financial services by small, low-income-designated and newly chartered credit unions. The office works to ensure the viability and successful operation of credit unions through training, technical assistance, loans and grants.

Consumer Action is no stranger to providing training to small credit unions, having long provided free educational materials and training guides to credit unions throughout the country. Over the past five years, we trained 69 credit union staff members from 17 states through our financial literacy projects.

During her presentation, Audrey Perrott, associate director of outreach and training for Consumer Action, gave the NCUA staff an overview of Consumer Action's work, discussed training opportunities available to credit union
staff, reviewed our free financial literacy publications, and discussed resources for consumers, service providers and credit union staff. The NCUA staff was given samples of Consumer Action's "Why Adults Learn" PowerPoint
slides to take into the field to give small credit unions pointers for working with adult learners. Perrott offered additional "best practices" tips and techniques for preparing presentations.

Perrott provided samples of financial literacy curriculums developed by Consumer Action and explained the key components of Consumer Action's educational model: a leader's guide, a lesson plan with interactive exercises, PowerPoint slides and one or more multilingual consumer brochures. Explaining that many brochures are available in five languages, Perrott showed training modules for Manage Your Money Wisely: Tracking your money and ID Theft & Account Fraud from our MoneyWi$e partnership with Capital One, and Credit Cards: What You Need to Know and Families and Credit Cards, developed in partnership with American Express.

"This opens an exciting opportunity to expand our reach and assist in increasing the capacity of smaller credit unions," says Perrott. "We have established a great foundation for future trainings and dissemination of materials for the consumers the credit unions serve."