FREETOWN, Sierra Leone–The Canadian Cooperative Association, which has been working in this country since 2009, held an eight-day training session for Cooperative Credit Union here.
Held at the Baycon Fields Brookfields, Solomon Mwongyere, said the goal is to work to develop more credit unions in Sierra Leone. The project here is being funded by a Canadian corporate credit union and the Irish League of Credit Unions’ Foundation, according to Awoko.com.
In 2009 there were six credit unions based in Freetown, but that number has since grown to 22 across the country. The initial six credit unions were founded with teachers as their core fields of membership.
This they started in 2009 with six Credit Unions based in Freetown but this number has grown as “we are working with 22 now across the country and out of those Unions we have six which are for teachers, based at districts levels
Speaking to the role of the Canadian Cooperative Association, Mwongyere said, “We try to build their capacity because these people are those who don’t know about the situations in the banks, they have not done any savings at any banks so we train them on some financial topics,” Awoko.com reported. “We do training on bookkeeping and financial management, because these people get savings from members so we have to train them on these areas. We educate the leaders and members of the (CU) to see how best they can manage and control people’s money. We looked at cash management, further dealing with how to calculate interest and how financial standards work so when they go back they can manage their own business. We work with the Departments of Cooperative at the Ministry of Trade and Industry. We do monitoring and evaluations and visit all credit unions across the country.”
Mwongyere told Awoko.com that banks are often not available to many people.
Credit unions have encoureaged Sierra Leoneans to engage in CUs “because with cooperation you don’t need to be rich to save.”