CCA's two-year effort to strengthen savings and loan co-operatives in Barbados is showing results. Participation in the four, 8-week long on-line self-study training courses CCA developed for the Barbados Co-operative & Credit Union League Ltd (BCCUL) has surpassed expectations. Enrolment climbed from 15 to 79 participants in the first two weeks of the program which covers financial management, marketing, credit risk, and strategic management.

CCA is doing this work in conjunction with Dalhousie University's College of Continuing Education. The consultancy is funded by the Inter-American Development Bank.

"We've worked with the league in the late '80s and early '90s so it is exciting to be rejoining them in their efforts to improve the delivery of training and development services to credit unions in Barbados, says CCA Region Director for Asia and the Americas Lydia Makuch Phillips."

The Belize Credit Union League has engaged CCA to assess needs and deliver management and governance training to the League and its member credit unions in a project funded by the Inter-American Development Bank. The needs assessment has been completed, training is underway and a series of training guides have been created and passed over to the League.

For this six month project CCA is once again collaborating with Dalhousie University's College of Continuing Education to help credit unions in Belize strengthen their operations. This second Caribbean initiative allows CCA to further build on the tools it is developing for credit unions in Barbados.

The first credit union in Belize opened its doors in 1943. Today the Belize Credit Union League includes 13 credit unions and 90,000 members. CCA worked with agricultural co-ops in Belize in the early 1980s and later with co-operative fishers. In the 1980s, CCA's work touched every Caribbean nation through a project with the Caribbean Confederation of Credit Unions. CCA's association with CUSO put Canadian credit union professionals into every Caribbean nation for periods of up to two years.