NELP’s Summer 2017 Financial Empowerment Workshop Series

Over the summer, the Neighborhood Entrepreneur Law Project (NELP) partnered with Barclays and Rise New York to host a free three-part Financial Empowerment series. The series included two educational presentations and a one-on-one session with financial professionals from Barclays. Recognizing the lack of readily accessible and free resources for people looking to achieve economic stability and success, the three-part series was designed by NELP & Barclays to help attendees build knowledge and learn how to manage their personal and business finances. “Our goal was for attendees to leave each workshop feeling empowered to take control of their own finances to find ways to eliminate their money worries,” said Akira Arroyo, Director of NELP. To build that sense of empowerment, we designed the workshops to equip attendees with financial planning tools such as tracking spending habits, creating a budget, planning accordingly to meet current expenses and avoiding serious debt, and planning for future goals like owning a small businesses.

Part 1: Personal Finance
To kick off the series, finance professionals from Barclays gave a presentation on the importance of personal financing and provided attendees with real life examples, tips, and resources to create and maintain a personal budget. In addition to designing a personal budget, the presentation topics included choosing the right bank account, tracking and managing spending habits, and understanding credit. The panelists described their own experiences and lessons learned on money management, sharing helpful finance habits they discovered along the way. All attendees surveyed after the event reported that the presentation was helpful, and most attendees stated that they felt more confident and planned to apply takeaways from the presentation to taking control of their finances.

Part 2: Business Finance
The second presentation focused on basic business accounting and finance. Finance professionals spoke about forecasting expenses for business plans and provided attendees with a step-by-step description on how to create balance sheets and financial statements for their current or future businesses. At the conclusion of the program, most attendees noted that they felt more confident about creating a business plan and putting together balance sheets and financial statements.

Final Workshop: One-On-One Counseling from Finance Experts
The final session provided entrepreneurs with a unique opportunity to meet with and receive one-on-one accounting and finance advice from finance professionals. Barclays’ volunteers reviewed business plans, balance sheets, and financial statements. They answered questions regarding business finances and gave advice on how to best move forward with a business without putting one’s personal and business finances at risk. After the one-on-one counseling session, all of the entrepreneurs said they received good feedback from the volunteers, found the session helpful and said they felt better prepared to move forward with their business goals.

At the conclusion of the series, a soon-to-be entrepreneur who attended all three workshops said she found the final one-one-one session the most helpful “because they were forced to apply everything they had learned in the other workshops and overcome their fears,” reminding all of us at NELP and Barclays why we work so hard to put events like this together. This summer’s Financial Empowerment Workshop series was a success, and we are happy to know that attendees left the workshops feeling empowered to take the next important step in taking control of their finances and creating economic stability for themselves and their families and some have gained more confidence to make their dreams of starting their own business come true.

To hear some tips from Barclays’ financial professionals, listen to the Financial Empowerment Workshop Series podcast on our Media page. On the Media page, you will also find an infographic breaking down the workshop attendees’ feedback of each session.

A special thank you to the Barclays team who made the Financial Empowerment Series possible. We appreciate your involvement!

• Dana Berlin
• Ruth Burrison
• Bianca Castricum
• Raj Imteaz
• Dylan Lowrey
• Patricia Oreta
• Helene Rosenberg
• Anna Shearer
• Jared Stellar