This website is motivated by the success and feedback received from multiple workshops conducted for teens and young adults on developing good financial decision making skills. Financial skills are especially crucial for disadvantaged students such as foster teens who have limited guidance when they exit foster care system and are at higher risk to be negatively effected by unsound financial skills. This website's purpose is to share lessons learned from conducting workshops for financial empowerment and serve as a resource for people desiring to conduct such lessons/workshops in their own communities. If you want to start financial-education related workshops in your community, this website will walk you through the necessary steps and provide easily understandable and customizable lesson plans and associated activities.
In order to start a workshop, there are three things to consider- the location, the audience, and the content for the workshops. This section details helpful hints for selecting them.
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Location
One good way to find a location for conducting workshops is to partner with a local community organization. For example, I partnered with Teen Force, an organization that helps Foster Teens find jobs. These organizations have access to conference rooms and will offer them to you free of charge. Another way is to work with local public libraries; they often have rooms for public activities.
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Audience
One of the best ways to reach out to your target audience is to work with community organizations that work with your target audience. However, another great way to access your audience is by reaching out to schools in the area where you want to spread financial awareness and work with the school’s administration. Public libraries also have a bulletin board to announce upcoming events and may be a means of contacting your audience.
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Content
Developing content for this subject can be difficult. While we intuitively understand what it means, there is no defined curriculum or method as to how to help someone incorporate sound financial skills in their daily life. To help with this process, the next section shares lesson plans and associated activities to help you develop your method to help your audience learn to apply the concepts in their lives.
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Wise Budgeting
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Smart Purchasing
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Loan Management
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Good Credit
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Personal Investment
The above diagram breaks down the main topics to cover. Based on the length of the workshop, each topic can be covered in more or less detail. Regardless, the linked pages to this section will provide plenty of material that can be used. In addition to lesson plans and details on the content, there are also suggested activities to make the sessions more interactive. We hope this information will help you get started. We can always be contacted for more information.
