Strength and willingness to strive to survive…

Strength and willingness to strive to survive are great qualities for anyone to have.  I found those qualities quite refreshing in one of the clients I came to know in the career center where I serve as the Financial Opportunities Coach.  Here we serve both youth and young adults (ages 16 to 24), giving them the encouragement and tool to jumpstart their careers.

Imagine being a young single mom with a young impressionable daughter having the courage to leave her supports on the west coast and choose to venture to North Carolina to start life afresh.  Well I met such an incredible single mom who said her inspiration is to make a better life for herself and her daughter.  She and her daughter are currently living in a shelter, but are expected to move into their first apartment very soon, and mom started her first job.

Coaching young people is not quite like coaching older adults.  They are not big on appointments and told how they should do something.  Young people prefer space to decide if the information and options you have presented are relevant to them and their circumstances.  My young single mom was no different, telling someone about budgets or spending habits is hard to conceive when you haven’t had your first job or paycheck.

Over time she began to get comfortable enough to confide in me.  I began to learn the intracule details of her spending habits.  She does have a checking account but no one had ever discussed with her things like balancing your checking account, overdrafts, or other bank charges.  So, first of all I explained to her how banking works.

I gave her some worksheets on budgeting, creating an emergency savings, and even preparing for retirement.  I also gave her a handout on choosing a banking institution and the many services banks and credit unions offer.  Well, this week she starts her first job, will soon receive a paycheck, and finally move out of the shelter into her very own apartment.

 

From Stress to Success

With the innate responsibility to face her financial future, Ja’qlyne took matters into her own hands. She recognized that navigating a budget can be somewhat challenging. Reaching out to our program at Innovative Changes, she expressed the need for a Financial Coach and was soon was matched with Christian. It’s fairly well  know that Portland is an ever expanding city, a national hot spot; therefore, Ja’qlyne had a bit of a difficulty adjusting to the new found housing prices. “She was doing all of the right things (living efficiently), but was just having a hard time getting by as rents in Portland rose.” Christian explains.

So, as two competent women worked side by side to achieve financial success of one, Christian disclosed the approach she used with  Ja’qlyne down her road of financial empowerment, “I think encouraging helped. Going the extra mile to get her the resources she needed. To make sure I wasn’t judging at times when she wasn’t able to stick to her new budget. I also shared relatable stories with her such as ‘When I was in school, I prioritized XYZ and treated myself X a month’”.

Christian feels that Ja’qlyne is solely responsible for her own success. “This was all Ja’qlyne, I just gave her direction and encouragement. Ultimately she set herself up for her own success” She says with proud adoration. It’s amazing how far people can get with just a little care and support. Financial education is crucial for succeeding in life. It‘s in everything we do! Once acknowledging this, we work together as  community to keep eachother accountable. Fortunately for Ja’qlyne, She had the wonderful Christian giving her an abundant amount of reassurance to be auspicious!

 Latrisa DeGraft-Hanson has been a United Way of Greater Atlanta Financial Coach volunteer since January 2015. The inspiration to volunteer was stirred after countless interactions with financially unaware individuals who came into Bank of America where She worked as a Financial Center Manager.  What she recognized was that many people did not have the skills or ability to manage their personal finances and she saw a cycle of despair and frustration.  She wanted to help break this cycle or at least interrupt it.

 As a Financial Coach, she says she has the chance to partner with individuals who want to do better for themselves and their families by adopting better financial behaviors.  She absolutely enjoys seeing “the light go-on” when someone really understands how simple effective money management can be with discipline, focus and accountability.

 She chose to connect with United Way because of its reputation for truly helping communities, families and individuals facing life’s challenges. United Way works with those who are ready for accountability to achieve their financial goals and or career aspirations.  She is delighted to be connected.

Latrisa has been absolutely touched by client partners when they share “their joy in actually being able to save $2,000” or just being a listening-ear for a single parent, who’s struggling with how to validate an adult-son who wants to express his independence while still living at home.  She states “Honestly, each coaching interaction is different, but  I feel so fortunate to be allowed to engage, encourage and  be encouraged from these interactions.”

 For now, Latrisa is pursuing an MBA at the University of North Georgia, Mike Cottrell College of Business in Gainesville, GA.  For her second-act career-wise,  she intends to work as a purpose-driven financial consultant while still helping others to achieve their personal financial goals.

 

 

 

 

HOPE BRINGS CHANGE

Pamela Wakefield 

Pamela Wakefield is one of the financial coaches for The Collaborative in Raleigh, North Carolina.

She is currently assigned to Ms. Y who is experiencing financial crisis, and desires to improve her financial situation.

Ms. Y came to her first coaching session with coach, Pamela Wakefield, feeling stressed and overwhelmed. Ms. Y is a 74 year-old Hispanic woman who is retired and on a fixed income.  Her expense exceeds her income, and she is in jeopardy of being homeless, because her roommate moved to another state, leaving Ms. Y responsible for the rent and utilities.   In addition to that, Ms. Y is fearful that she will not have a place to live, because her name is not on the lease.

As a coach, I was able to create an environment for Ms. Y that was built on trust, respect, and most of all hope.   Because of that, Ms. Y felt comfortable discussing her financial crisis with me.

I was able to help Ms. Y create a budget and discuss options for reducing her expenses, and advocated for her to talk with the property manager regarding her housing options, as well as, seek affordable housing as an alternative.

At each session, I encouraged Ms. Y to be hopeful that her financial situation will change as she continued to move forward. Hope is defined, as a feeling of expectation, and that something good will happen, or a desire for a certain thing to change. It’s a feeling of trust.

Ms. Y was hopeful and it gave her the energy she needed to put her plan into action.  And as to date, April 5, 2017, Ms. Y feels less stressed, she is more aware of her spending habits and plans to move in June.

I’ve learned that if the coach and the client are both hopeful, change can take place.

What’s its about…

As a Vista, my job is to build sustainability. So I understand that I need the help of volunteers to help guide my sustainability efforts and serve as a direct service agent. One of the biggest challenges we have faced is creating more coach clients, clients that finish the program and then return as a coach to take on clients on their own. The goal of sustainability is highly weighed on that task.

Not only do we task our volunteers to help change/provide a different perspective for an individual to evaluate their cognitive mindset but also to encouragement the client to return to become a volunteer, each a notably difficult task in their own right.

We have one volunteer Bill Kresser that has accomplish such a feat and then some. His first client match has had a dramatic shift in her financial paradigm. Furthermore, she exited the program and has agreed to be a volunteer financial coach herself. On top of working with his client one-on-one, Bill has participated in countless workshops and helped recruit his co-workers in becoming volunteer financial coaches.

Denzel Washington said, “At the end of the day it’s not about what you have or even what you’ve accomplished… It’s about who you’ve lifted up, who you’ve made better. It’s about what you’ve given back.” This quote pointedly dares you to question the positive impact that you have and will have on others. I can attest, that at the end of the day, Bill has lifted, made better, and given back to others in ways that have matter the most.

Souls of the fighters

Dr. King sang a rhetoric that was inclusive. His war cry was to stand up and take soulful actions to demonstrations of injustice and hate. For people to be an antagonist to all acts that try to nullify or silent the inherited rights given to all American citizens.

Tarrant Churches Together was a depiction of different ages, races, ethnicities, gender, and religions coming together to carry on Dr. King’s war cry. The symbolic nature that 50 years later we as Americans are still fighting the same fight as Dr. King. May present feelings of derision and gloom toward the cause. However, the souls that echoed in the church services at the beginning ceremony of Tarrant Churches Together. Yelled out that Dr. King’s dream and vision lives on and will continue to, regardless of the antagonist. My ability to be a coordinator by directing people to their respective community service site and passing out water. To me was my small battle ax helping to penetrate the social and racial issues will still face.

Dr. King’s words, legacy, and deeds will forever overshadow his actions.

The Art of Volunteering

The Suncoast Arts Festival is a free community initiative that gives artists and craftsman the opportunity to showcase their talent while spectators learn about the excellence and beauty that exists in their own backyard. Promoting culture, creativity, and community, SAF raises awareness and resources for arts education in Tampa Bay. The streets of the Wiregrass Shopping Center were lined with booths and tables, each like a miniature boutique filled with a unique point of view. I volunteered at the Kids’ Art Garden, where I took on the important task of encouraging the talent and creativity that lives in the hearts of Tampa Bay’s future leaders. The pure fun I experienced from helping kids paint, draw, and craft something that they could be proud of as their own work allowed me to see Dr. King’s dream in real-time action. These kids, their parents, the volunteers, the artists, the vendors, all festival participants were from different cultures, ages, socio-economic classes, and value systems, but on this day, creativity was our equalizer. Creativity does not discriminate or hold prejudice; creativity manifests in everyone in different ways; creativity looks best when shown in all the colors possible. Dr. King’s ultimate sacrifice reminds us that serving your community is an obligation to your conscious. The individual is not truly successful unless she or he is actively and positively influencing the success of their community. For my passions, success means making financial opportunity accessible in places where it seems out of reach and elevating the smallest members of our community to uncharted heights until everyone in the human race realizes their potential for greatness is far beyond the starting line. Through the Financial Opportunity Corps and volunteerism such as my day at the SAF, continuing Dr. King’s legacy is ingrained in my everyday life.

MLK Day: A Time To Encourage Others

Tarrant Churches Together MLK Day of Service was the order of the day on Monday, January 16th.  The event was held at Baker Chapel AME Church in Fort Worth TX.  After the service, participants had a choice of 30 activities that they could choose from to make a difference in their community.  I chose to write encourage notes to the employees who work at the Stockyard on Main Street.  These notes are put into their sack lunches and I hope it helps brighten up their day when they see that someone thought of them.  I believe Dr. King’s legacy lives on through the people who reach out to encourage, support and help others.  I believe that everyone needs to be encouraged and shown that someone does care about them.  This is important for all of us.

MLK Day of Service 2017: The Hamburg Food Drive

One of The Service Collaborative of WNY’s annual traditions is the MLK Day Food Drive.  Since 2013, the staff have gathered together with their families, friends, Americorps members, and an enormous group of community volunteers to gather non-perishable goods for the FoodBank of WNY.  The timing is always critical: typically the local food banks are rife with goods around Thanksgiving and the holidays, but once the holiday season has passed, there comes to be a shortage of available food.  And with the chance that the eligibility requirements for SNAP would be changing for Erie county, the need to procure food for those individuals was all the more dire.

Thankfully, Adam Bartoszek, our coworker at The Service Collaborative and program manager of VolunteerWNY has had years of practice, and put together what was the most successful MLK Food Drive yet.  In the weeks leading up to the event, team members from The Service Collaborative took time out of their workdays to travel to the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg and place informational door hangers with plastic bags at every house in the town and village.  One story that was recanted many times was of how during the previous year’s event, the plastic bags had been white, and were impossible to see during the blizzard that hit on MLK Day.

This year though, the bags were blue, and you could not have asked for better weather. A total of 249 volunteers gathered at the Hamburg Memorial Youth Center to venture through the neighborhoods of Hamburg gathering the filled blue bags from front porches, sort through the goods, and package them into boxes to be given to families.

The total amount of collected, sorted, and packaged goods came out to a whopping 13,400 lbs, which would in turn provide 11,167 meals to individuals and families in need.  To put the massive food output into perspective, the total amount from the first four years of the project combined came to 13,800 lbs.

At the event’s kick-off, Josh Haeick from the Village of Hamburg’s Parks & Recreation Department thanked everyone for coming out, being active and doing their part.  While the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will be echoed forever in his “I Have a Dream” speech, it was his skills at organizing and leadership as well as the actions he took with the along with the rest of the Civil Rights movement that managed to accomplish a better world for many.  As Josh pointed out, you are not accomplishing anything by tweeting at 3am – it’s only by taking action and getting involved that we are actually able to make great the community that is around us.

Team Work Makes the Dream Work

In January 2016, we launched the largest coaching cohort that we had ever managed, with over 54 individuals attending our boot camp and 27 clients paired with volunteer financial coaches.  We also had 14 individuals choose to participate in the six month program on the DIY track without a coach. The graduation for this cohort is August 2nd and we are thrilled to bring everyone back together to celebrate all of the successes.  We even invited a client from our October 2015 cohort to come and speak about her financial journey and accomplishments at Graduation as a keynote. The January cohort saved a combined total of over $28,266 and paid down over $29,814 in debt, in just the six months since January.  One of our clients also purchased a home and many made huge financial steps forward that will hold benefits for years to come. This would not be possible without the coaching program management team we have built at Clarifi.  In the beginning of January, it was just Megan and I.  By the end of January we were able to bring on Katelyn, our Coaching Program Management Fellow, and by the end of February Antoinette, our Coaching Program Manager, joined the team.  With the additional staffing, we were able to better track our clients and coaches, better train our volunteers, and solidify the coaching infrastructure here at Clarifi. We also launched a cohort in both April and June and are looking forward to similar outcomes and success stories.