Episode 22: One Year of War and the Resilience of Ukrainian Credit Unions

With February 2023 marking the somber one-year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we look back on how several projects and entities have worked with Ukrainian credit unions to keep them resilient and open to members. That includes the World Council of Credit Unions/USAID Credit for Agriculture Producers' (CAP) Project, which works with partner credit unions to ensure their member farmers have loans, so they can continue producing food during the war. Ivan Vyshnevskiy, a Ukrainian citizen who serves as Deputy Chief of Party for the CAP Project, talks about how project staff have not only helped those credit unions continue to lend, but to even help agricultural lending outperform every other credit union loan sector since the war began. Plus, Mike Reuter, Executive Director of Worldwide Foundation for Credit Unions (WFCU), discusses the response from credit union leaders around the world who have donated nearly $2 million to WFCU's Ukrainian Credit Union Displacement Fund. More than $600,000 from that fund has already been sent to Ukraine to help credit unions maintain operations and to provide needed support to the farmers themselves. Finally, Anatoli Murha, Senior Vice President of Ukrainian Selfreliance Federal Credit Union and a member of the Ukrainian-American Credit Union Association, discusses the massive outpouring of financial support from the Ukrainian-American credit union sector, and the difference that has made in Ukraine.