Des Moines Area Community College recently issued the following announcement.
DMACC’s Evelyn K. Davis Center (EKDC) and GreenState Credit Union have teamed up to provide multilingual financial education opportunities and services for refugee and immigrant communities in the Des Moines Metro area.
The EKDC Polk County Financial Empowerment Center offers personal financial education to provide the tools necessary to strengthen their financial capability. One of the Center’s core services is Financial Education and Asset Building. Providing multilingual classes and workshops to historically underserved and underrepresented communities helps individuals move forward on their financial journey.
Through this partnership, the Polk County Financial Empowerment Center at Evelyn K Davis Center for Working Families will offer multilingual Financial Fitness, Homeownership Workshops, and Small Business Boot Camps, and also Digital Skills classes. Collectively, these services help support individuals navigate online systems, including banking, and also move them toward asset building for themselves and/or their businesses. Languages included in these offerings are Spanish, Swahili, Arabic, Karen, and another language to be determined based on community needs.
GreenState Credit Union is committed to offering inclusive services, as evidenced by the priority service areas of Racial, Immigrant, and Refugee Equity and Affordable Housing and Financial Inclusion.
“Our ‘Community Investment Statement’ sets a goal of investing $500 million in mortgage lending over the next decade to help close Iowa’s racial homeownership gap,” GreenState CEO Jeff Disterhoff said. “To be sure, we will continue to lend to Iowans of all races and financial backgrounds. While we continue our focus on creating value for all GreenState members, we recognize that as Iowa’s largest credit union, we have a special responsibility to address racial inequities head on.”
“This partnership will help build on our already existing financial education program specifically to integrate our unbanked immigrant and refugee communities into the United States financial systems,” said Ahmed Agyeman, Ph.D., Director of the Evelyn K Davis Center for Working Families at the DMACC Urban Campus.
For more information, contact: Ahmed Agyeman, Ph.D., (515) 360-2541, akagyeman@dmacc.edu
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