Coast Capital Savings supports expansion and evolution of FE community of practice

Over the past year, Coast Capital Savings generously committed to providing one year funding from December 2021 to December 2022 allowing us to provide capacity building and training to community organizations to start, improve and expand Finanical Empowerment (FE) services. In particular, this funding helped support the enhancement, expansion and formalization of the structure and membership of the Financial Empowerment Champion (FEC) Community of Practice (CoP).

As part of our three year strategy to expand and animate our national FE community of practice, the support from Coast Capital Savings ensured that we could help partners in their work with clients living on low- and moderate incomes. The increasing financial complexity faced by Canadians msut be addressed from multiple pathways due to the pandemic, the inability to access crucial benefits, reduction in incomes, housing and food costs. This work will help partners to collaborate and navigate clients' growing fear, shame and anxiety surrounding financial stresses, the dubious nature of payday lenders and the critical need to support tax-filing processes. This also includes partnering alongside additional supports networks such as food security organzations, upskilling, reskilling and benefits access interventions.

We have been working to deepen the engagement of members of the FEC CoP and further support them with the necessary funding from of Coast Capital Savings. This funding helped us coordinate monthly virtual meetups with 100+ members across 40+ organizations. The meetups provided opportunites for members to delve into tax filing clinic operations, access to benefit supports and best practices for the coordinated delivery of one-to-one financial help. Coast Capital Saving's commitment ensured that we could carry on the work of peer-to-peer sharing, learning, improvement of services, and designing service models for inequity experiencing groups. 

Without the commitment of funders such as Coast Capital Savings we would not be able to pursue capacity building strategies for our frontline service providers. We are grateful for their continued support.