Clackamas Recognized for Financial Education Outreach

At Clackamas, we work to improve people’s lives. One of our favorite ways of living this mission is providing financial education to youth and adults in our communities. This year, Clackamas received the Adult Desjardins Financial Education Award for our efforts in 2018.

In 2018, we spent over 40 hours teaching financial education workshops to adults in our community! We taught a total of 33 adult classes in 2018. Including 12 classes taught in Spanish! Our 11 adult education workshops covered a wide range of financial topics, including budgeting, identity theft, and special needs planning. We developed a new partnership with Northwest Housing Alternatives, a local non-profit that provides affordable housing solutions to those in need. Two of our volunteers provided one-on-one budgeting counseling to their residents to help them get accepted into down payment assistance programs.

Staff volunteers also taught students about the Matched Education Savings Account (MESA) program through our partnership with Clackamas Community College. These efforts helped nine students develop more robust savings habits and reduce their student debt. During the course of this program students participate in online financial educations classes which cover a wide range of topics. These classes cover things like how to read credit reports, tips when buying a car, how to build a budget, and more. Over the course of 2018, our MESA program helped these students save $3,080.64. Two students used part or all of their matched funds to pay for school covering $3,012.20 of tuition costs.

“I am so proud of our staff for winning a Desjardins Award again this year,” said Clackamas President/CEO, Aaron Goff. “Financial education is an important part of the work we do to help people get their personal finances under control and improve lives. It is wonderful to see that hard work recognized by our peers in the credit union movement.”

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