Katie Walker, Social Worker, The City of Edmonton The importance of supporting education after high school to increase financial capacity building is a well-known strategy in the area of financial empowerment. For the Edmonton Financial Empowerment Collaborative and the City of Edmonton, we have been providing train the trainer sessions to service providers directly working with parents for the past few years. In 2018, we have developed new relationships with English language learners to directly provide information sessions on RESPs and the Canada Learning Bond. (English Language Learning Class at Clareview Library, March 2018 Presenters: Katie Walker, City of Edmonton and Alyssa Fraser Hopkins, BSW Student)
We have done presentations to over 140 community members so far in 2018 and have tailor made the sessions to the literacy level of each group.There are great benefits of working with service providers to engage participants; they are experts in developing material that is plain language and accessible to the populations they work with and they often have years of valuable experience working with newcomers. One facilitator created a word list from our presentation and developed a bingo game to help reinforce some of the words that they heard for the first time. Not only did the participants have fun but came to better understand the meaning of new words. We look forward to working with others to find new ways to support families to attain long-term financial stability.