Committee - Financial Literacy

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Mission Develop programs aimed at transferring financial literacy skills to economically challenged adults in the New York City area.

Contact Co-chairs   Karen Damley   Ann Diamond

Objectives

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Our objectives for 2008 were to continue teaching at University Settlement, add a new organization, Nontraditional Employment for Women and increase the number of FWA trainers.

Accomplishments/Highlights

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Financial Literacy Program Honored
view the inspirational photo album presented to the Financial Literacy committee by a recent group of program participants.




The FWA in partnership with The Bank of America and the United Way of New York City presents an eight-week financial literacy seminar for people with minimal financial education who find their life choices severely limited. The goal is to foster economic self-sufficiency by providing participants with the necessary tools for basic money management.

The program commenced in the Spring of 2005. It has been expanded to include two sessions, one in the Spring and another in the Fall. Both are being held at The University Settlement Society of New York which is located on the lower east side. Each session graduates twenty participants and includes the following topics:

	Cash Flow and Budgeting
	Using Credit Cards and Fringe Financial Products
	Getting Out of Debt
	Organizing Financial Documents
	Understanding Financial Organizations
	Discussing Tax Issues
	Investing to Fund Goals

Some features of the program that make it ground-breaking are:

	FWA members conduct each session. Our membership of financial planners and specialists in insurance, taxes, investments and education make us uniquely qualified to share knowledge about financial skills.
	Each session is taught, in part, by a peer trainer. This spokesperson provides valuable information and shares her experiences which empowers the group to attain success. A peer administrator handles the multitude of details that ensures each session runs smoothly.
	The homework is available in English, Spanish and Chinese to reinforce the lessons of the week and make it easy to understand.
	Students with particular legal, financial and tax problems are referred to an FWA expert for assistance in resolving the issue.

Program Accomplishements for 2007-2008 are:

	Completed two sessions of the program and graduated 40 students
	Continued our work with University Settlement on the Lower East Side
	Began teaching at Nontraditional Employment for Women
	Expanded the number of FWA Trainers
	Continued working with a peer trainer and a peer administrator at University Settlement and trained a peer trainer and a peer administrator at Nontraditional Employment for Women.

Special Thanks

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Thank you to FWA for being supportive of this Committee; to University Settlement and Nontraditional Employment for Women for recruiting the students, providing the space and working out the details. We also want to thank our peer trainers and peer administrators for their dedication and hard work. Special thanks to Lisa Buddenhagen for copying our manual to a disk. To all of our committee members: we couldn’t run this program without you. Thank you for making it such a success.