Women’s Initiative for Self Empowerment
Background and Purpose
Women's Initiative for Self Empowerment (WISE) was founded by multi-cultural, first-generation immigrant women in 1995 as a means for social, economic and leadership empowerment of Asian, African, and Latino immigrant women and girls. With a mission of "empowering immigrant women and girls to succeed", most of WISE's constituents are refugee/immigrant women, girls and their families in the Twin Cities, predominantly in the Saint Paul area. Their goals are to:
- increase immigrant women's leadership and decision making capacity;
- increase public awareness of the issues affecting immigrant women and girls;
- promote diversity;
- create social and systems change by engaging women's organizations to work together to increase the visibility of women leaders and their contributions to society; and
- partner with others to leverage resources and training for immigrant women and girls to become self sufficient.
WISE operates four major programs in partnership and collaboration with Asian, African and Latino agencies in the areas of leadership, health and economic self sufficiency: Girls Getting Ahead in Leadership; Individual Development Account Initiative for New Americans; Integrating Foreign Trained Healthcare Professionals for Self Sufficiency; and the Financial Literacy Initiative for Immigrants and Refugees.
Current Request
WISE is requesting support to build on the success of their Financial Literacy Initiative for Immigrants and Refugees. WISE currently works with ten financial literacy consortium participants (nonprofit agencies), and they plan to expand the consortium by recruiting five additional agencies serving recent and anticipated refugees. The principle goal of the Financial Literacy Initiative for Immigrants and Refugees is to improve the economic conditions of immigrant/refugee families by providing them with information and skills needed to achieve economic self sufficiency and social/civic integration into their new communities.
The Financial Literacy program has been using the "Becoming Part of Wealth in America" curriculum which has been culturally adapted by WISE in collaboration with leaders from each ethnic community. The curriculum has been translated into seven different languages, Spanish, Hmong, French, Somali, Oromo, Swahili, and Amharic. The Financial Literacy workshop takes 70 hours to complete, allocated between the curriculum training, financial counseling, reporting, minimal case management, referrals to services and follow-ups sessions. WISE encourages entire families to take part in training so the family can together work toward financial self sufficiency.
An evaluation of the Financial Literacy Initiative determined a need for expanded services once participants have completed the training. The Financial Literacy Initiative for Immigrants and Refugees now also works with individuals and partner agencies to help people open accounts at banks or credit unions. They can also access Individual Development Accounts to help them save for family goals and they are encouraged to access free tax preparation assistance.