Financial Literacy Effort Earns Member Service Award for DuPont Community Credit Union

WAYNESBORO, VA (11/12/2010)(readMedia)-- DuPont Community Credit Union has won 1st Place honors in the Louise Herring Award for Philosophy in Action competition. The competition honors credit unions for their practical application of the "People-Helping-People" philosophy that is the hallmark of the credit union movement. It is sponsored by the Virginia Credit Union League and the Credit Union National Association (CUNA).

The credit union's award-winning entry focused on its participation in the Filene Research Institute's Debt In Focus program, a Web-based debt management program that the credit union field-tested for the Filene Institute.

The program's goals were to help members better manage debt, to reach lower-income households, who might have trouble stretching their budget to manage debt, and to educate young people, who may have unrealistic expectations of their ability to manage debt after college. More than 2,300 of the credit union's members used the Debt In Focus resource.

"The Debt In Focus program enabled us to reach members most in need of personal finance counseling," says DuPont Community Credit Union President/CEO Gerald Hershey. "Through the program, members were able to develop a budget, get advice on saving for retirement, and rebuild their credit score."

DCCU is a not-for-profit financial cooperative and was founded in 1959. The Credit Union currently has over 57,000 members and more than $732 million in assets. DCCU operates nine branches in the Central Shenandoah Valley region. For more information visit our website at www.mydccu.com.

The competition is named after Louise McCarren Herring, a credit union pioneer, who believed that the operational application of credit union philosophy helped better people's lives.