The
Irish League of Credit Unions Foundation (ILCUF) have recently offered coaching
to National Association of Co-operatives Credit Unions of The Gambia (NACCUG)
to enable them to perform their roles effectively.
NACCUG
is the apex body of all the 54 Credit Unions in The Gambia who are members but
in total there are 76, 570 credit unions in the country.
The
ILUF is a charitable arm of the Irish credit union movement and its mission is
to alleviate poverty in developing countries by supporting credit unions, their
representative bodies and other co-operative type organisations as a means for
socio-economic development through the provision of financial and technical
assistance.
The
ILCUF volunteers aimed to contribute to decreasing loan delinquency and
improving financial performance of credit unions by assisting credit unions in
the area of loan management, credit control and financial statement
interpretation.
General
Manager of NACCUG, Foday Sanyang said they have continuous collaboration with
ILUF because Irish credit unions are advanced, saying they want to emulate how
they were able to move their credit unions from where it was and where it is
now.
He
said the volunteers visited almost all the credit unions to see their records
and how best they can help them to do their work more effectively.
According
to Mr Sanyang, the coaching program is a give and take process because there
are some practices that both parties benefit from.
Michael
Byrne, a volunteer from ILUF said they have seen good practices from Gambian
credit unions but they are faced with challenges of insufficient resources and
staff to do the work.
Bernie Moran said the credit unions need good recommendations in order to look up to
better practices. She said credit union staff have the opportunity to network
and learn from each other. “Joining the credit union is never the decision that
you will regret. They are enjoying and sharing profits.”
