As more banks turn their backs on community needs, the lure of credit unions is stronger than ever.

FOR THE PEOPLE LIVING IN CENTAL BROOKLYN, New York, finding a needle in a haystack might be a snap compared with finding a local bank. In fact, there are only two banks that serve the area's mostly black community of 750,000.

These New Yorkers, though, are hardly waiting for a Citibank or Chemical to set up new branches in their backyard. Taking control of their own financial destiny, they've set out to do their own "thang."

In fact, it was a group of activists from the under-30 "hip-hop" crowd who took matters into their own hands last January when they founded the Central Brooklyn Federal Cerdit Union. Offering savings accounts, loans and other financial services to individuals, churches and businesses in the neighborhood--the grass-roots credit union is putting Central Brooklyn back on the financial map.

"We decided it was time to resume the work of the civil-rights and black power movements," declares Mark Winston Griffith, the credit union's president. "Building a community-owned financial institution is [pushing] the financial frontier."

The Central Brooklyn Federal Credit Union is but one example of how the nation's 13,200 credit unions are taking fiscal accountability to a new level. Operating solely to meet the needs of their members--rather than make profits--credit unions are empowering communities, churches and employee groups to spread their collective wealth as they see fit.

It's no surprise, the, that the credit union motto: "Not for profit, but for service," resonates more loudly than ever before. Over the last decades, as banks grew larger and catered increasingly to more affluent depositors and corporate accounts, many more Americans have flocked to credit unions. Today, says the Madison, Wis.-based Credit Union National Association (CUNA, these institutions count over 65 million members and $280 billion in assets. Credit unions are based on a simple operating principle: People should pool their money and, in turn, make loans to one another.