Last Day of Class

It happened! We made it! Today was the last day of the class, and it was such a powerful and fun event tonight!!

As mentioned in the previous entry, our last class was held at the USC campus. The JEP program reserved a space and allowed us to see parts of their beautiful campus.

With excitement in the air, the USC students coordinated a great lesson plan with a final "Jeopardy" game to end the class. The vast majority of the class covered identity theft and how this can affect a person's financial well-being. Unfortunately, there was a student in our class who recently fell victim to identity theft. The students had a ton of questions on how someone can prevent and recover from identity theft since their information in the Foster Care system is frequently passed along from one organization to the next. Our Financial Experts from the Capital Group frequently chimed in with their hints, tips and tricks on how to properly protect sensitive information from identity thieves.

Because the discussion was so lively and every person in the room was engaged, we didn't have time for the Jeopardy game.

One of the directors of the JEP Program with closing remarks.

USC Undergraduates going over the statistics of victims of identity theft.

Instead of playing the final game, we finished up the lesson plan and had our small graduation ceremony! The Transitional Aged Youth were incredibly grateful for the opportunity to learn about topics they never really were exposed to. As a part of the ceremony, the USC JEP program, the Right Way Foundation and LIFT-Los Angeles awarded each participant with a certificate of completion! Check out one of our pictures below!

 It was a powerful moment in the room. Many of these TAY community members haven't been given the opportunity to prove themselves in their young lives. Having the opportunity to participate in this class with powerful minds in the financial market is something they could not have accessed until the Right Way Foundation, USC JEP and LIFT-LA developed this pilot program.

We also wanted to take some moments to honor and thank our Financial Experts! Thanks to our Financial Experts' dedication to the community, we were able to successfully deliver quality information to the TAY students. They have helped in every single class to make sure the correct details and and information were properly being introduced to the students. They were a huge asset to this program, and the program wouldn't have been a success without their contributions. We have made the Financial Experts honorary LIFTers! Check out their nifty new shirts below!

Lastly, we ended the class with an invitation to the TAY students. Now that they received quality information from this Financial Literacy course, we invited them to come into the LIFT-LA office and learn how to apply what they learned. Some have said they wanted to save up for a car. Some have said they wanted to save up money for college courses. Some have said they wanted to invest! They were all so excited to receive their certificates and stipends, and we wanted to help them form specific goal plans on how to properly use their money and reach their financial goals. A couple of students have already signed up with LIFT, and we are looking forward to working with them!

Thank you all for keeping up with this blog!! Now that our pilot has finished, we are so eager to implement our new cycle of financial literacy courses. We received so much interest from the Capital Group that they would like to teach some classes themselves! It was a successful program, and we are excited to start the new cycle soon.

Lots of love and warmth from Sunny SoCal,
LIFT-LA