{"id":29696,"date":"2017-01-04T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T15:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/?p=29696"},"modified":"2021-04-23T17:06:52","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T21:06:52","slug":"meet-women-teach-financial-skills-homeless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/meet-women-teach-financial-skills-homeless\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Women Who Teach Financial Skills to the Homeless"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: This is part of our Good on the Ground series<\/a>, profiling entrepreneurial women who are addressing social issues in innovative and inspiring ways.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

It\u2019s graduation night at the House of Hope, a homeless shelter in Lowell, Mass. <\/span><\/p>\n

A small group of low-income women sit with their volunteer coaches, celebrating the completion of Budget Buddies — an unusual financial program that might just change their lives. Over the past 6\u00a0months, the women have learned <\/span>core money-management skills, designed to make them economically self-sufficient and prevent them from sliding back into poverty. They\u2019ve learned the basics of budgeting, banking and credit. And, perhaps most importantly, they\u2019ve been given a rare boost in confidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>

Women Helping Women<\/h2>

Listen to our podcast episode for more of our interview with Anita Saville and Kathy Brough.<\/h3>

\u201cComing from a corporate background, it\u2019s been interesting to me how much help there is out there for nonprofits,\u201d Saville says. Early aid was provided by the <\/span>Jericho Road Project<\/span><\/a>, which in 2012 helped the two structure Budget Buddies as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3). That was an important step, as it allowed them to seek grants from state agencies, family foundations and individuals. <\/span><\/p>\n

Saville and Brough also attended workshops at a local bank, Enterprise Bank, to learn the basics of running a nonprofit — something neither had done before. \u201cThe first couple years, it\u2019s hard to convince funders that you\u2019re going to be around,\u201d Saville says. \u201cYou\u2019re running on volunteer fumes, you don\u2019t have any money, and how are you going to be sustainable?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the numbers soon spoke for themselves: Budget Buddies has now run 35 programs at 19 different agencies, helping an estimated 400 women. About 70 percent of the \u201cbuddies\u201d who leave the program say they feel confident about their abilities to manage money, compared with just 20 percent when the program starts, Saville says. \u201cIt\u2019s stunning to us the changes in the buddies from the time they come into the program to the time they leave.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\"budget-buddies-meeting\"Among the many \u201csuccess\u201d stories is Marissa, who arrived at House of Hope when her daughter Gina was 7 months old. Marissa, who had worked in retail, had lost income because she had no maternity leave benefits; she soon couldn\u2019t afford rent. In a testimonial on the House of Hope site, she calls the Budget Buddies program \u201cthe very best education\u201d she could have received while in transition. \u201cIn order to have a stable family and stay out of homelessness, you need to be able to manage your money,\u201d she says. Marissa now lives in her own apartment and has a network of support to help her juggle daycare and work. <\/span><\/p>\n

Looking Ahead<\/b><\/p>\n

Saville and Brough have been able to secure donations from the <\/span>Theodore Edson Parker Foundation, Eileen Fisher Inc., and the Massachusetts state treasurer\u2019s Financial Literacy Trust Fund. They also hold an annual fundraiser. Thanks to <\/span>Brough\u2019s conservative management of funds — \u201cSome say \u2018cheap.\u2019 I say \u2018frugal,\u2019\u201d Brough jokes — Budget Buddies now runs on a lean annual\u00a0<\/span>operating budget of $363,000. That\u2019s enough for the founders to draw a modest full-time salary, plus pay for an office and a small but dedicated staff. Locally, \u201cwe\u2019ve become more of a household name,\u201d Saville says, which has allowed them to recruit and train more than 275 volunteers. <\/span><\/p>\n

In 2016, Budget Buddies was selected for the <\/span>Social Innovation Forum<\/span><\/a> program, a Boston organization that helps nonprofits increase their impact. Saville and Brough have an ambitious goal that they refer to as their <\/span>\u201c20\/20 Vision\u201d<\/span><\/a> campaign, which includes training local agencies in Boston and beyond to run their own programs based on the Budget Buddies curriculum. They hope to <\/span>to find resources to run 20 direct service programs and 20 affiliate programs by the year 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

While they now have staff and committed volunteers, Saville and Brough still attend every first workshop — and every graduation ceremony\u00a06\u00a0months later to witness first-hand the change in the women\u2019s confidence. \u201cPersonality wise, someone who couldn\u2019t look you in the eye to begin with is talking away at graduation about how wonderful her coach was,\u201d Saville says. \u201cIt\u2019s really very emotional.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\r\n
\r\n\t\tRead Full Transcript<\/i><\/span><\/a>\r\n\t\t
\r\n\t\t\t

Anita Saville and Kathy Brough - Founders - Budget Buddies<\/p>\n

SOT: So, Nancy is coming back to us to coach. I believe this is her seventh time coaching.
\n-Wow.
\n-Well I have somebody here who says that they don\u2019t know how to make a budget, they don\u2019t have a bank account.
\n-I wonder if we should put her with a tough buddy.
\n-Okay.<\/p>\n

Anita: A lot of women end up in poverty for various reasons. Their families have been living in poverty for years, and years, and years. They have little financial education. Then you couple that with poor role models, lots of personal financial challenges, and women are just overwhelmed by, by money issues.<\/p>\n

SOT: Jasmine Torros, she wants to get her life back on track.<\/p>\n

Anita: Budget Buddies provides financial education for low-income women through an innovative program that combines 12 instructional workshops with one-to-one coaching. The women who are the clients, who come to us through social service agencies, we call them the buddies.<\/p>\n

Kathy: You don\u2019t have to have a financial background to be a coach in Budget Buddies. You just have to care about women helping women.<\/p>\n

CARD: Anita Saville + Kathy Brough \u2013 Founders \u2013 Budget Buddies \u2013 Lowell, Mass. \u2013 USA<\/p>\n

Kathy: I\u2019ve always done finance and operations for small businesses. 23 years ago I started volunteering at a homeless shelter and became a client advocate \u2019cause I felt I could offer them help applying for benefits.<\/p>\n

Anita: I worked for Fidelity Investments as an editor, but, while I was writing for upper income and middle-income folks, what was happening for the folks who didn\u2019t have advice on how to manage their money?<\/p>\n

TEXT: Kathy and Anita met while volunteering on a political campaign in Massachusetts. They shared an interest in helping homeless women.<\/p>\n

Anita: We realized that we worked pretty well together and we complemented each other in terms of the things that we liked to do.<\/p>\n

Kathy: Yes. It\u2019s lucky that, you know, I don\u2019t like the podium and Anita does. So I do the finances and she does the writing so, perfect.<\/p>\n

TEXT: Anita and Kathy consulted with social-services agencies and homeless shelters to develop the curriculum for Budget Buddies.
\nIn 2010 they held their first workshops, pairing a volunteer coach with a homeless buddy.<\/p>\n

Anita: All workshops are about an hour and they\u2019re scheduled every two weeks. On the in between week the coach and her buddy can meet and apply what they learned in the workshop to the buddy\u2019s individual financial situation. We also have workshops that deal with self-esteem, changing behavior, and really giving the women the confidence that they need in order to be able to go on and manage their money after Budget Buddies stops.<\/p>\n

TEXT: For five years, they ran Budget Buddies out of Kathy\u2019s home and a convenient caf\u00e9. They raised money from state agencies, foundations and private donations to support operations.<\/p>\n

Anita: The first couple of years it\u2019s hard to convince funders that you\u2019re going to be around, because you\u2019re the new kid on the block and we started our organization just at the top of the recession so people were laid off, people were, you know, they were closing nonprofits. That actually worked to our benefit because a lot of professionals who were out of work said, \u201cWell, what am I going to do with myself? Well, I\u2019ll go volunteer,\u201d so they brought their professional talent in.<\/p>\n

TEXT: Kathy and Anita finally opened their office in 2015.
\nThey have two full-time and four part-time employees.<\/p>\n

SOT: And they\u2019ve been meeting with them about Budget Buddies, they\u2019ve been trying to talk to them about their goals.
\n-Great.
\n-Yes.<\/p>\n

TEXT: The program has trained over 275 coaches to help more than 400 buddies.<\/p>\n

SOT: It was like a learning base between the both of us, you know. Step by step. Like I\u2019ve shown her stuff, she\u2019s shown me stuff, you know, we kind of give and take.<\/p>\n

Anita: There\u2019s a tradition we have at graduation. Because it\u2019s the last night that the group is going to be together, we have the buddy say something to the coach and the coach say something to the buddy.<\/p>\n

Kathy: Our graduations are very special. We get to every graduation.<\/p>\n

SOT Anita: You have done something that a lot of people never do. Never make a budget, never really put money away for savings, never track their expenses to see how much they\u2019re spending. So you are so far ahead of most of the people in this country. And for that, we give you applause.<\/p>\n<\/p>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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