Financial counseling initiative launched in fifty-one cities, counties
The Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund, in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Citi Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and the Wells Fargo Foundation, has announced an initiative to help fifty-one cities and counties offer financial counseling and assistance to residents in need.
As part of the effort, the CFE Fund has launched a Financial Navigators initiative, which will provide thirty-one city and county governments with grants of $80,000, technical assistance, and training, enabling them to offer remote one-on-one coaching sessions designed to help residents navigate the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Localities selected to participate in the effort include Anchorage, Baltimore County, Hawai'i County, Little Rock, Los Angeles County, Milwaukee, Tulsa, Waco, and Washington, D.C.
The effort also includes an expansion of the fund's Financial Empowerment Center (FEC) initiative — a program piloted in 2008 in New York City under then-Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — which works with cities and counties to offer professional, one-on-one data-driven financial counseling. The latest funding will support additional counselors in twenty current partner cities and enable the fund to enhance its national FEC infrastructure to accommodate remote services. FEC partner cities include Akron, Detroit, Nashville, Sacramento, and San Antonio.
"The COVID-19 pandemic is not just an unprecedented public health crisis that has cost over a hundred and sixty thousand Americans their lives — it's also an unprecedented economic crisis that has left millions devastated financially, with many questioning how they're going to provide the next meal for their families," said Bloomberg Philanthropies CEO Patricia E. Harris. "We're glad to support the CFE Fund in their work to reduce the income inequality that has made the impact of this crisis far worse, and to provide people across the country with the tools and skills they need to survive this pandemic — and be more financially stable once it's over."
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