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This is a text-only version of an article first published on Tuesday, 21 May 2019. Information shown on this page may no longer be current.
Alison Le Cornu has always been interested in all things involving money.
She tells Jo Duckles about her life and why she decided to join the board of the Oxfordshire Credit Union.
Alison Le Cornu Born in Jersey, Alison grew up in a Methodist family.
"They were very involved in the Methodist Church.
I swapped to Anglicanism in my teens as that was where my school friends were," says Alison, who worked as a music teacher, a coach driver and taught English as a foreign language, before moving into higher education.
Her first degree was in music, and a few years later her church in Jersey paid her fees to complete a theology degree at Oakhill College. Learning has become her specialism and her career has seen her running distance learning masters and bachelors programmes at universities including the London School of Theology and Oxford Brookes. Alison first heard about credit unions around four years ago when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, began promoting them.
"When I think about commercial loan bodies I get angry," she says. Her professional career saw Alison becoming freelance following redundancies and she now works from home in Oxford.
A recent extension to her house provides her with a spacious office with shelves stacked with an array of books on a wide range of topics.
"I do lots of work for the University of Gibraltar.
I've got lots of things going on really, some involving the Church.
I've done a project with the Archbishops' Council looking at the areas of research linked to theological and ordination training conducted in theological and religious studies departments in universities.
"I enjoy the flexibility of the freelance lifestyle but I miss the collegiality of an office based job. "Despite her specialism in education, money has been a theme that has run through Alison's life.
She remembers her parents' altruism towards the poor.
"My mother read an account in the Guardian newspaper of a woman who had written an article on how difficult life was financially.
Mum was so moved she got in touch, formed a friendship and helped her.
When I went to theological college my church paid my fees.
I was brought up in an evangelical environment with a strong financial ethos.
It had a very strong emphasis on tithing and generosity. "Oakhill supported a college in Uganda which gave Alison the opportunity to see a different economic model in operation.
"It was a college that had nothing.
The library had half a dozen books.
It was a society where corruption was rife. " While she was travelling to Uganda, all her belongings were stolen.
Alison had to find people who could help her in an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous place.
But it was Uganda that really sparked her interest in politics.
"I am interested in the differences between the UK's two main parties and in what the Liberal Democrats do in the middle of it all," says Alison, a member of the Liberal Democrats who is livid about Brexit. Alison spent time working for the South American Mission Society and spent 18 months at the United Evangelical Theological Seminary in Madrid.
On her return, she started a career in higher education, working at the London School of Theology. Her interest in credit unions was sparked when Hector Sants, the Chairman of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Task Group on Responsible Credit and Savings, gave a talk at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford.
Alison and friends St Mary's considered how they might respond.
Annette Mountford, the wife of the then vicar, the Revd Brian Mountford, was already running a charity helping people, some of whom were badly in debt. Contact with the Blackbird Leys Credit Union in Oxford highlighted how closely linked unions were to the theological notion of community. "You have to belong to a community to belong to a credit union.
To join the Oxfordshire Credit Union you have to live in Oxfordshire and the C of E started up the Churches Mutual Credit Union.
You could even start a credit union for members of a particular golf club, so long as there is something that bonds people and they borrow and save through it.
If you then borrow and don't pay back you are effectively stealing from your next door neighbour. "
Alison lives in West Oxford.
Oxfordshire Credit Union ( OCU ) is part of the Credit Union Solutions consortium alongside five other credit unions based in and around the diocese.