Wells Fargo Foundation

Summary of “Tools for Financial Literacy, Empowerment and Justice” convening held on June 28, 2019 at UCI. Hosted by the Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) and sponsored by Wells Fargo, the convening was a day of interactive workshops and talks that brought together practitioners from Orange County and LA County community organizations with experts in the fields of financial literacy research and pedagogy.

This report analyzes different sets of relief payments that have been made from the federal government, the government of California, city governments, and non-profits which focus on helping individuals and families during the COVID-19 outbreak.

This report is based on a survey of financial literacy service providers and a convening held at UC Irvine on June 28, 2019, with service providers in Orange and Los Angeles counties as well as innovative financial literacy and education providers from around the country. These efforts focused on bringing state-of-the-art, innovative leadership in financial literacy to the existing community of dedicated service providers both to spark new ideas and foster deeper conversations among local nonprofits involved in the difficult work of financial education. This report summarizes the need for financial wellness education, provides an overview of the services offered today in Orange County, and reviews new approaches to financial literacy and wellness education, hoping to shift the discourse from the limited notion of financial literacy to the more comprehensive notion of financial well-being. In addition, this report offers guidance to nonprofits seeking to refresh their existing programs or create new programs, focusing on training, capacity assessment and augmentation, and program evaluation. It also provides resources for nonprofits with different resource levels and levels of commitment or ability to bring financial literacy programming to their constituencies.