Download or read book Hands Around the Globe written by Ian MacPherson and published by Touchwood Editions. This book was released on 1999 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Credit Unions date back to community-based, co-operative banking that arose in Germany in the nineteenth century. In Canada, the first adherents gathered in Quebec; the caisses populaires were begun by Alphonse Desjardins in 1900. At a recent congress of the World Council of Credit Unions, in Vancouver, B.C. over 2,000 delegates from 85 countries represented 36,000 credit unions with 90 million members and $380 billion (US) is assets. As this book shows, growth has not always been easy; credit unions around the world took hold in a variety of social, political and cultural systems.