Latino Community Credit Union

Luis Pastor, CEO

Headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, the Latino Community Credit Union serves as a model for financial institutions seeking to serve immigrant communities and the unbanked. Created in 2000, the Credit Union has brought 51,000 people into the financial mainstream by providing affordable, full-service financial products and services. With its innovative and comprehensive bilingual financial education program, the Credit Union has reached more than 9,755 low-income and unbanked immigrants hampered by language barriers, limited education, or cultural distrust of financial institutions. LCCU, which has received national and statewide recognition for its sound financial practices, has seven branches across North Carolina and is the fourth largest community development credit union in the United States.

For more on the Latino Community Credit Union, visit:
www.latinoccu.org

Queens Library

Fred Gitner, New Americans
Program Coordinator

One of New York City's three independent library systems, serving one of the nation's most ethnically diverse counties (with nearly half of all residents foreign born and 55 percent speaking a language other than English), Queens Library has systematically upgraded its programs to facilitate use of library and educational services by immigrants and their children in order to build literacy and life skills. Through the New Americans Program launched in 1977, Queens Library provides literacy and English language classes, multilingual computer workshops and e-books, online portals to social services for immigrants, civic engagement and citizenship courses, increased access to health care networks, assistance in launching a business, and homework help for the children of non-English speakers, among other services. The library system is the nation's busiest, circulating more than 23 million books, videos, music, and other library items in 70 languages in 2007.

For more on the Queens Library, visit: www.queenslibrary.org