Learning Smart Together: Community Pathways to Education Savings Bonds

Abstract Information: Momentum is a change-making organization that combines social and economic strategies to reduce poverty. As a community economic development organization with a vision that every person has a sustainable livelihood and can contribute to their community, their mission is achieved through working with people living on low incomes and community partners to create a thriving local economy for all. Working with individuals, businesses, communities and systems in a holistic way leads to a more inclusive local economy. Momentum’s work includes financial empowerment, entrepreneurship, and skills training, to developing communication skills, building self-confidence and establishing positive social networks.Since 1991, Momentum has provided innovative, high-quality programs to people living on lower incomes.Each year, Momentum works with over 2000 people through financial empowerment, skills training, and business development programs, supporting them to build sustainable livelihoods and ultimately exit poverty and scales their efforts through community partners to reach 15,000 people annually. LearnSmart was a systems-level pilot project delivering a financial empowerment intervention targeting young adults to support their learning about, applying for, and accessing federal government education savings programs.Through these savings programs, eligible individuals were provided with “free money” towards their education savings and related expenses.Community partners from the city’s academic institutions, and settlement services formed the project’s strategic advisory committee and collaborated with government agencies, a technology company and their foundation, as well as the local Aspire financial empowerment collaborative to directly reach eligible youth aged 18-19. The project embedded a developmental evaluator to reflect joint learnings to identify individual, community, and systems-levels barriers. Project partners focused on identifying solutions to increase reach and savings uptake by youth from hard to reach populations. By collaborating with the Aspire financial empowerment collaborative, community and government agencies and a technology company, Momentum empowered diverse populations, including newcomers, to access savings grants and reduce the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Beyond increasing access to education savings tools, this project identified individual, community, and systems level barriers that hard to reach populations experienced and solutions which support equitable access to education. This ignite session highlights the collaborative’s learnings, their successes, their enablers/inhibitors and lessons learned to support diverse youth’s access to Post-Secondary Education (PSE) financial supports.