A report in the St Louis American tells of an initiative by social work students from Washington University:
In remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr., the Society of Black Student Social Workers at Washington University’s Brown School will host the fifth annual “Financial Freedom Seminar: Recovering From the Recession, Reaching for the Future.”
The seminar, free and open to the public, is designed for St. Louis community youth and adults interested in building wealth, repairing and maintaining good credit, purchasing a home or starting and expanding a business.
The FDIC recently reported that St. Louis has the highest percentage of unbanked African-American households in the entire country. “This devastating statistic implies that many of our community members are not effectively being connected to quality, financial education resources,” said Jessica Eiland, the event’s co-chair, a society member and a Brown School graduate student.
My comment: This great initiative shows how students can use their knowledge to contribute to serving the community, but especially the importance of helping over managing finances. Some of the more esoteric psycho-type social work needs to keep their feet on the ground. At St Christopher's Hospice, evaluations have shown that seminar-format educational approaches are a good way of getting people to accept help with financial issues - it's non-stigmatising, compared with a problem-based approach, because you say in effect 'everyone need to learn about these issues' rather than 'you've got a problem that we need to sort out'.
On the web: http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/article_2e0ae0a4-1dca-11e0-9652-001cc4c03286.html
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