Building Wealth and Health Network: A Microfinance/TANF Demonstration Project

The Self Empowerment Groups (SEG) curriculum draws key components from the S.E.L.F. tool within Sanctuary, focusing the four domains: creating personal, emotional, moral and physical safety (S), processing and managing emotions (E), recognizing loss and letting go (L), and developing goals for a sense of future (F). S.E.L.F. establishes a common language that all people who have experienced adversity can use to organize their lives and work towards building stable foundations to support their goals and invest in their potential.

The Financial Empowerment curriculum developed for this study consisted of interactive exercises, worksheets, and journal assignments that fostered understanding and practice of banking, building credit and debt management, making the most of one's money, and setting financial goals for oneself and one's family. Content focused on identifying and harnessing the internal and external resources that participants can leverage to begin taking steps towards financial self-sufficiency.

Participants were assisted with opening a savings accounts at a local non-profit federal credit union (with 1:1 matches of up to twenty dollars per month) over the course of 12 months.