LISC LA is excited to announce the new Financial Opportunity Center (FOC) Community of Practice made possible by our partner Pacific Western Bank. The FOC Community of Practice is a cohort program which will bring together our FOC organizations and new community partners to share best practices on asset building and career pathway development.
FOCs do critical work in financial literacy coaching, COVID-19 relief, and workforce development throughout the larger Los Angeles community. The Community of Practice will consist of our current FOC partners – the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation (MAOF), Coalition for Responsible Community Development (CRCD), and Central City Neighborhood Partners (CCNP) – as well as four new community partners: The RightWay Foundation, Asian American Drug Abuse Program (AADAP), A Safe Place for Youth, and First Place for Youth.
The RightWay Foundation is empowering foster youth to successfully enter the workforce and become financially stable using a holistic approach focused on mental health and self-sufficiency. Their work is critical in facilitating equitable transitions from foster care to employment, and their trauma-informed approach creates space for healing to ensure productive and sustainable futures.
AADAP has been working to improve community health in underserved Los Angeles communities since 1972, with their comprehensive approach to substance abuse education, treatment, and ongoing support. Their commitment to prevention and treatment also includes efforts to increase occupational and financial opportunities for people experiencing addiction, in order to provide a community network of support.
A Safe Place for Youth is committed to creating accessible, trauma-informed support networks for youth experiencing homelessness in L.A. Through a combination of case management, direct outreach, education and employment guidance, health and wellness services, and advocacy work, A Safe Place for Youth is providing on the ground resources and opportunities to young people within local communities.
First Place for Youth provides education and employment services to young people transitioning out of the foster care system. Using a self-sufficiency model, program managers work directly with foster youth to establish housing options, create healthy coping skills, and encourage long term educational goals with the goal of combatting homelessness and incarceration for the next generation.
LISC LA is grateful to explore new partnerships and expand our impact in different communities, and we believe the environment presented by the Community of Practice will provide important opportunities for collaborative partnership development between these seven organizations.
Over the course of eight capacity building sessions, our new partners will be introduced to the FOC and Bridges to Career Opportunities (Bridges) model of financial counseling, and will participate in a collaborative environment of information sharing in order to integrate new practices into their organization’s approach. This model will initiate important multidirectional conversations between these organizations in order to create novel development approaches – from integrating trauma-informed care into FOC case management, to creating increased financial coaching capacity for our new partners.
"Financial counseling and coaching adds another layer of support for individuals who are seeking employment, and who are seeking to increase their financial wellness as a whole," said Shona Sen, our program officer at LISC LA who headed the Community of Practice.
Workforce development and asset building are more essential than ever in the face of COVID-19 related job loss, and it will require a combination of resources to ensure effective support for impacted individuals. By prioritizing workforce training, financial coaching, and trauma-informed outreach efforts in historically divested communities, the LISC LA Community of Practice will facilitate the implementation of best practices across all of our partner organizations.
15% of people in the US lost their jobs during the initial COVID-19 outbreak, and those numbers were especially hard hitting in LA County. Experts predict that the U.S. will not revive those jobs until 2024.
"In the meantime people need to eat, they need to pay rent, and they need to meet their basic needs and more in the next several years and more," Sen said. "We’re doing two things at once: making sure that people are able to get employed quickly, but also able to train for positions that allow them to have good jobs at the same time."
At LISC, part of our mission is to build alliances to increase impact within the community. In tandem with our financial resilience and COVID-19 relief work, this Community of Practice serves that mission. Most importantly, however, it creates space for these organizations to become more sensitive, more resilient, and more effective in supporting Angelenos for the years to come.