Page 23 - Sicredi Ingles Flipbook

the executive director of CAS. The CDE is charged with deciding norms under its authority, based on credit union decisions, and recommending ways to implement systemic strategies, according to the instructions of deciding bodies.
Our pioneering roots
Sicredi is fruit of a pioneering experiment in Brazil. The idea of credit unions was introduced into Latin America by Swiss priest Theodor Amstad. In 1902, in the municipality of Nova Petrópolis, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, he led the establishment of what was then named Sparkasse Amstad - Amstad Savings and Loans - and currently Sicredi Pioneira RS, adopting the cooperativism model conceived by Friedrich Raiffeisen in 1862, in Germany.
For the first time in Brazil, smallholding farmers could mutually secure resources without being subject to the inflated interest rates charged by loan sharks or the traditional financial system, precisely because they did not have the guarantees necessary to offer creditors.
In the years to come, led by Amstad and other Jesuit priests, credit unions
Raiffeisen Patio
In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, the man who created the model that has inspired most rural credit unions around the world, in 2018 the “Raiffeisen Patio” was inaugurated at the Sicredi Administrative Center – CAS, aimed at paying tribute to the history of the credit union movement and the legacy of those who came before. The space features the bronze busts of three pioneers: that of Raiffeisen; one of Theodor Amstad, founder of the first credit union in Brazil; and another of Mário Kruel Guimarães, one of the idealizers of our systemic organizational model.
Bronze busts in tribute to the pioneers of cooperativism at the Raiffeisen Patio.
Sicredi’s Trajectory and the Strength of Cooperation |
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