Vélez, Myers earn CDCUs’ Highest Award

José Feliciano Vélez, board member of Cooperativa de Ahorro y Crédito Electro-Coop, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Bill Myers, CEO of Alternatives Federal Credit Union, Ithaca, N.Y., earned the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions’ (Federation’s) 2004 Annie Vamper Helping Hands Award. This is the Community Development Credit Union (CDCU) movement’s highest honor, reports the New York-based Federation.

Since 1978, William Myers has been actively involved in the credit union movement. He was a founding member of Alternatives Federal, and has been its manager and CEO for 25 years.

Myers has exemplified the ideals of cooperation and volunteerism in many facets of his career. He has contributed significantly to the broader field of community economic development. His contributions to the movement also extend to financial education, where he developed the Credit Path Model of Financial Empowerment, which provided a theoretical model with which to understand how low-income people can advance themselves economically.

Vélez hails from the Puerto Rican cooperative movement where he’s a member of three credit unions. He has been a board member of Electro-Coop for nine years. In 2002, the Puerto Rico League of Cooperatives honored Vélez for his volunteerism and leadership in the cooperative movement.

The Annie Vamper Helping Hands Awards honors the Federation’s late associate director, who served the organization from 1983 through 1990 after a distinguished career in every part of the credit union movement. She was a pioneer African-American credit union manager in the Southeast, and an official in the National Credit Union Administration’s Office of CDCUs during the late 1970s and early 1980s.