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The FINRA Investor Education Foundation (FINRA Foundation) announced today that it has partnered with Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) to launch new financial education programming and resources to meet the needs of girls and their families in underserved communities.
The FINRA Foundation supported the revamp of GSUSA Financial Empowerment Programming. The FINRA Foundation worked with the GSUSA program design team to develop financial activities including the development of a Financial Empowerment Playbook designed to aid Girl Scouts in the development of council-run single or multi-day events leveraging Girl Scouts Financial Literacy, Entrepreneurship, and Cookie Business badges to teach girls key financial literacy concepts.
GSUSA has released the Financial Empowerment Playbook to 111 Girl Scout councils nationwide who serve 1.7 million girls, including 571,000 girls from communities of color.
“The FINRA Foundation is committed to making financial education more accessible to underserved communities because research shows that financial education works and that individuals who participate in 10 hours or more of financial education exhibit better financial behaviors. Our partnership with the GSUSA will help equip up to 1.7 million girls, many of whom are from communities of color, with the knowledge and skills to make informed financial choices,” said FINRA Foundation President Gerri Walsh.
The Financial Empowerment Playbook covers financial and entrepreneurship concepts, and offer goal setting, money management and business development experiences through the Girl Scout Cookie Program. It involves a new GSUSA financial literacy and entrepreneurship program portfolio based on five strategic principles:
- Think like a girl
- Make the volunteer experience easy
- Build consistent program experiences
- Approach projects with creative enthusiasm and innovation
- Focus on data-driven decision making
The Financial Empowerment Playbook will make available in the first quarter of 2023, for the first time, materials in both English and Spanish for approximately 40,000 Latina/Hispanic Daisy grade level (kindergarten and first grade) girls, their parents, troop leaders and volunteers.
In addition, the FINRA Foundation and GSUSA will conduct in the coming months Financial Empowerment Events with Girl Scout councils in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Rockville/Washington, DC, and Southeast Florida (Boca Raton). The Girl Scout councils participating in the Financial Empowerment Events serve 271,000 girls, of whom 88,000 are girls of color.
Located near FINRA offices, the Girl Scout councils participating in the Financial Empowerment Events will provide FINRA employees with an opportunity to volunteer, in-person or virtually, as mentors or facilitators for financial education activities. The Financial Empowerment Events are a component of the FINRA Foundation’s Colleagues Contributing to Communities Initiative launched in March. Inspired by one of FINRA’s Racial Justice Task Force “seeds of change” to advance financial education with K-12 grade students in underserved communities, the Contributing to Communities Initiative marries the expressed desires of FINRA employees to volunteer and support financial education within underserved communities, with meeting the volunteer needs of the FINRA Foundation’s financial education community-based partners.
