Self-Help Credit Union
When Martin Eakes was a teenager growing up in a poor, rural community outside of Greensboro, N.C., his best friend was shot and killed on a playground near Martin's home.
On that day, Martin vowed to live his life for the two of them. Martin went on to graduate from Yale Law School, but instead of taking a lucrative position at a high-powered New York law firm, he returned to North Carolina to devote his energy and talents to improving the lives of the poor.
In 1980, Martin started Self-Help as a way to help the poor help themselves. His first loan was for $1,700, to help seven laid-off textile workers start a community bakery. From those modest beginnings, Self-Help has grown into a financial powerhouse. At its core is a credit union that takes in deposits and lends out money to low-income people who want to buy homes or start businesses, and to nonprofit organizations. Self-Help also repurchases home loans made by large banks to low-income buyers. The 501(c)(3) community development financial institution now has more than $1 billion in assets.
The nonprofit Center for Community Self-Help and its financing affiliates, Self-Help Credit Union and Self-Help Ventures Fund, provide financing, technical support and advocacy for those left out of the economic mainstream.
Self-Help isn't the only organization lending to low-income home buyers. In the last decade a host of lenders went after these borrowers, some offering loans with reasonable conditions and others offering predatory loans with onerous terms, now dubbed subprime loans. To combat these predatory lending practices, Martin helped launch the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), a research and policy making organization that operates at the state and national level. With Martin at the helm, these organizations are working to protect homes and family wealth by working to eliminate abusive financial practices.
Excerpts printed with permission from Stanford Social Innovation Review, summer 2008, www.ssireview.org)
Learn more about Self-Help Credit Union at www.self-help.org.