Credit Building Program

Build a future for limitless opportunity

Good credit is essential to achieving and maintaining financial stability, accessing opportunities, and building a future that allows individuals to pursue their career and life goals.

When turning on utility or cell phone services, people with poor or no credit are often required to provide deposits of several hundred dollars, and because many landlords check credit, these workers struggle to rent quality apartments.

Finally, nearly half — 47 percent — of employers use credit checks when making a hiring decision, suggesting that having bad credit can be an additional barrier to landing a job—especially for positions that handle payments.

The goal of the program is to help individuals build strong credit scores, increase their familiarity with credit building and saving products, and provide them with opportunities to continue building credit indefinitely through use of a secured credit card.

The program not only holds monthly workshops, but each member of our program has a one-on-one credit counselor to walk them through the steps to enhance their credit.

Teaching our young people the habits to build credit not only creates control of their finances but also creates limitless opportunities.

THE PROBLEM

Young people aging out of foster care systems often do not have the life skills necessary to help ease the way from foster care to adulthood. Therefore they experience higher degrees of incarceration, poverty, homelessness, and suicide.