Listen to this articleTo provide financial empowerment to young people in low to moderate-income areas, Webster Bank, with branches on Long Island, is expanding its Finance Lab program.
The Finance Lab is expanding to SCO Family of Services on Long Island, a provider of early childhood, independent youth and special needs and other programming to 50,000 New Yorkers each year, including in Nassau and Suffolk counties. Webster Bank is providing a $100,000 grant to SCO to expand the Finance Lab on Long Island. The bank is also giving $100,000 grants each to Boys & Girls Clubs of Providence, R.I., and Dorchester, Mass.
Marissa Weidner, chief corporate responsibility officer at Webster, said that the program is part of the bank’s multibillion dollar community investment strategy, which focuses on enabling people to get into affordable homes as well as increasing access to capital for small businesses, increasing community engagement and increasing access to banking services.
“We also feel it’s incredibly important to ensure folks have the skills that they need to be financially empowered and make the right decisions,” Weidner said.
This is where the Finance Lab comes in.
“We are partnering with various nonprofit partners across our footprint to bring this vision to life. We have carefully vetted and selected who we want to work with,” she said.
Each Finance Lab is “custom-tailored in partnership” with the nonprofits, Weidner said. “It’s not a cookie-cutter solution.”
In addition to the grant, “we are willing to bring our time and our talent in terms of our colleagues to the table,” she said. This can include potential internships, classes and more, addressing the true needs of the community, as they align with Webster’s vision.
At SCO, the grant will be used at its Madonna Heights campus in Dix Hills, which focuses on working with women and girls who experienced trauma. With the grant, SCO aims to teach financial literacy, working with its students and the women are cared for on the campus. SCO plans, with the grant, to provide the empowerment gift of financial literacy to help the people they serve transition into adulthood.
Financial empowerment “tends to be overlooked” when helping people recover from trauma and substance abuse who need therapeutic care, said Suzette Gordon, president and CEO of SCO Family of Services.
But the Finance Lab will help the people at the Madonna Heights campus become financially literate, an important factor in living independently.
“We’re so excited to start this project with this population to increase their ability to be successful when they transition out of care,” Gordon said.
All of the nonprofits receiving the Webster Bank grant are vetted to ensure that they are well-ingrained in the community, understand the community’s needs and have a proven track record of executing and delivering solutions that meet those needs, Weidner said.
The bank also makes sure that the selected nonprofits “have the capacity to take in this funding and deliver,” Weidner said.
Right now, the selected nonprofits are in the planning stages of their Finance Lab programs.
“This first-of-its-kind Finance Lab on Long Island will equip young people with the power and knowledge to thrive emotionally, socially and financially,” Gordon said.