From Yes Magazine:
Connelly’s credit union is part of a strategy by a nonprofit consortium of investors, financial organizations, and community development groups known as the Financial Cooperative to set up locally controlled loan funds across the country.
The cooperative’s founders believe investing and lending in marginalized communities can counteract historical wealth extraction, which happened in a number of interconnected ways, including removal of natural resources, discriminatory housing and banking practices, underinvestment in physical infrastructure, and a lack of well-paying, sustainable jobs.
The Financial Cooperative calls its task “nonextractive” or “regenerative finance.” The goal is to give control of capital to communities that have been most marginalized, but also to funnel capital into those communities.
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