A dozen women from as far away as Ghana, Mongolia, Malawi, Uganda, Nepal, Kenya and the Phi-lippines have spent the better part of a month in Canada learning about how this country’s credit union system works. And their plan is to import the best practices back to their homelands.

It’s all part of the Canadian Co-operative Association’s Women’s Mentoring Program, an initiative designed to increase women’s roles in the banking system in less developed countries and help them bring credit unions around the world into the 21st century.

Evelyn Antwi, manager of the Madina Community Co-operative Credit Union in Ghana, job-shadowed everybody at Sanford Credit Union in Sanford, Man. She says the gap between the financial systems in the two countries is substantial. For example, the majority of financial transactions in the West African country of 22 million are completed with cash. It is hoped that ATMs and debit cards will one day be as commonplace as they are in Canada, but that is years away.

“We have big plans,” she says. “We want to learn how to manage assets and reduce loan delinquency.”

People also have to retire in Ghana, so Antwi would also like to teach Madina’s 1,000 members about the importance of saving. Currently, members hold an average of $132 in their accounts.

Dave Domes, CEO of Sanford CU, says that although the absolute numbers in the two countries are at opposite ends of the spectrum, the concepts are very similar: “You need to be polite and persistent, whether you’re chasing down a $250,000 mortgage or a $500 loan.”

Although credit unions in Ghana are a half-century behind their Canadian counterparts, they will catch up more quickly than you might think as they adopt new technologies, Domes says: “They’re not going through the same evolution we did.”

The 10 other participating Canadian credit unions were Northern and Coastal Communities (British Columbia); Servus (Alberta), Lafleche and Affinity (Saskatchewan), Health Care Municipal Employees (Ontario), Omista, Bayview and NBTA (New Brunswick); and Valley (Nova Scotia). IE