Boutwell, flanked by the flags of the United States, Poland and European Union.
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
OCT. 5, 2021 | A Gwinnett resident and credit union official has been honored by the Polish government. He is Marshall Boutwell of Lawrenceville, president of the Peach State Federal Credit Union, who has been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, in a token of Poland’s appreciation and gratitude for his support and friendship. It is one of the highest awards awarded by the Polish government to foreigners.
The Polish ambassador to the United States, Piotr Wilczek, made the presentation to Mr. Boutwell in Washington, D.C. on September 14. This was conferred on Mr. Boutwell by the president of Poland Andrzej Duda, in October 2020. The ambassador said: “Mr. Boutwell receives this distinction for his outstanding acts of service in developing Polish-American cooperation in the field of cooperative banking.”
Mr. Boutwell has been working with representatives of Polish credit unions over the last 25 years. Ambassador Wilczek said in his presentation: “His achievements in the development of credit unions in both the United States and in Poland are truly of great merit. He is one of many Americans who established contact with Poland after our country had shaken off the yoke of communism and began its return to the community of free nations, built a market economy and various institutions emblematic of the free world.
“The 1990s was a time of revival and construction of the credit union movement in Poland. It was at that time that cooperation between the credit union sector in Poland and credit unions in Georgia was established….an ambitious program of cooperation and “twinning” American credit unions from Georgia with their Polish counterparts, SKOKs, was initiated. I am pleased to say that this program is still operational, thanks to which new cooperative unions in Poland, from their inception, drew on the experience of American credit unions, with Mr. Robert Marshall Boutwell playing a very important role in that process.
“Thanks to his dedicated involvement, Polish credit unions benefited from many acts of unconditional help made by their U.S. counterparts in the form of financial donations. This
Assistance was extremely important, as cooperative unions in Poland in the early 1990s were created only by the efforts of social activities who, in this form of financial activity, saw the possibility of supporting Polish families in the difficult times of Poland’s recovery from poverty and backwardness, resulting from over 50 years of communism. The agreement between the Georgia Credit Union League and the Polish SKOKs became the basis and model for cooperation. The World Council of Credit Unions considered it to be exemplary.”
Poland has had a long history of credit unions, going back to rural savings and loan associations in the late 19th century. Later, under communism, credit unions were destroyed. Therefore, when the credit union movement returned in the 1990s, “it badly needed assistance from overseas friends, such as technical expertise, the exchanges of experiences, and also, financial input,” Wilczek said. He then added: “Mr. Boutwell indeed turned out to be such a great friend of Poland and Poles. Without this friendship and the support, the idea (of cooperative savings and credit unions) would not have been revived in Poland.”
Boutwell says that his work with the Polish credit union consisting of sharing best practices, and helped develop their aspirations with tactical learning on how to implement programs. It consisted of some direct financial grants and became a major cultural exchange. Boutwell added: “We gained far more in return, and appreciated developing cooperative financial programs in the former communist county. This happened when consumer financial matters hardly existed there.”
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