HOPE Honored with Trailblazer Award
Contact: Scot Slay
Office: (601) 944-4175
Email: sslay@ecd.org
HOPE Honored with Trailblazer Award for Outstanding Service to the Underserved
Expanding Economic Opportunity within the Nation’s Most Distressed Region
Jackson, MS – Hope Community Credit Union (HOPE) is the 2009 recipient of Credit Union Times’ Outstanding Service to the Underserved award. The award is given each year during a special reception held in Washington, D.C. The Outstanding Service to the Underserved award recognizes HOPE’s continual efforts over the last 15 years to make affordable financial products and services available within communities that have the greatest need, and in particular its innovative partnership with the Enterprise Corporation of the Delta.
With a service area that encompasses America’s most endemic poverty, HOPE has become a national leader in deploying financial services in distressed markets. During recent years, HOPE has been one of the nation’s fasting growing credit unions, in terms of both membership and assets. Much of this growth occurred as a result of HOPE’s innovative efforts to assist with recovery and building on the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina.
Today, what began as a small church project in 1995 has become a regional community development financial institution with $120 million in assets, 27,000 members and 11 full-service branches dedicated to strengthening communities, building assets and improving lives across the Mid South.
HOPE and its nonprofit sponsor, Enterprise Corporation of the Delta, have partnered with private industry, public agencies, community organizations and others to assist more than 60,000 individuals and generate over $1 billion in financing for entrepreneurs, homebuyers and community development projects across Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
“We are greatly honored to receive this award,” said Bill Bynum, chief executive officer of HOPE. “It affirms that our work is making a difference and motivates us to do even more.”
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