Legal Wellness Clinic at TFD

We recently welcomed the Legal Wellness Clinic back to The Firehouse Dream for another Legal-Aid Wellness Check-Up for the community. Just like the first visit, community members had the chance to sit down with a licensed attorney and walk through a series of questions covering key areas like housing, immigration, family matters, employment, debt and credit, and future and safety planning. These conversations offered space for clarity, reassurance, and help with next steps. After each check-up, our community members received a Legal Wellness Plan outlining any areas of concern and resources to help them move forward.

We are grateful for this continued partnership and for the opportunity to bring accessible legal support directly to our community.

Money Healing at PMSA Mental Health Club

We are so excited to continue our programming in the Proviso schools! This week, we were at PMSA. Jasmine Lopez our ED and CEO of Mentally Mutual offered her money healing talk to the students. Many came with great conversation and productive feedback for us! We loved to hear their thoughts on their current ideals of money and how to change them to be more positive and reflective of their own boundaries.

Thank you to the students who came and to Jasmine for sharing her wisdom!

Community Talk: College Hacking

We were so excited to host our second community talk for the month of October. This month, Maya Hill, Executive Assistant at The Firehouse Dream facilities College Hacking. Maya has been able to attend college for low cost and wanted to teach her neighbors her tips and tricks. She talked about her story so far, what is college, and of course the tricks she used to go for low cost. We ended with a Q&A on the importance of educating students on their options besides college and decreasing the stigma against community college!

Thank you, Maya, for sharing your knowledge!

Adulting 101 Recap

We are so excited to announce the completion of our Adulting 101 cohort! As our mentees have started to move out of high school and start their adult lives, they asked for more resources for this transition. Many are financially responsible for bills while also being in school full time. We want to start creating opportunities for youth to build this wealth so they can make a change and teach others.

We held four different workshops, two in March and two in April. Our first two workshops were held by Jasmine, our co-founder, and ED. She led our youth through a money-healing and budgeting workshop. Stephanie, our board president, led our third workshop surrounding the credit building. The last session was led by Mariel of Money for Mujeres, which introduced investing and opening up their Roth IRA accounts.

Here are some thoughts from our participants on the impact of Adulting 101:

Maya, Spring 21’ Mentee

“After Adulting 101 I can proudly say that I have saved so much money by tracking my spending habits. Additionally, I have started my Roth IRA and believe I can retire a millionaire. There is so much I have learned from just over 4 weeks and how I can apply it to the rest of my life.”

Tracy, Spring 22’ Mentee

“Adulting 101 really helped me conceptualize my future in ways I didn’t think possible. This short, but valuable workshop helped me understand the ins and outs of being a young adult and did what I feel like wonders for my success going forward.”

Thank you to our facilitators and youth for showing up with curiosity and compassion!

Adulting 101 | Credit Building

For our third session of Adulting 101, a youth financial wellness cohort, we held a credit building workshop. This was led by our very own Board President, Stephanie Gill! Not only is she our board president, Stephanie serves as Director of Financial Wellness at a local nonprofit!

First, Stephanie led our young adults through some vocabulary terms and definitions when it comes to credit. Then she went into a couple tips on what cards to get, how to build your credit, and how to keep a high score. The youth showed great interest by asking curious questions. Thank you Stephanie for leading a great workshop for us!