Following graduating with her Bachelor’s degree in public policy from Hobart, William and Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY, Lauren Samuelson followed her passion to alleviate poverty in the Central New York region by accepting an AmeriCorps VISTA position at Alternatives Federal Credit Union in Ithaca, NY.  In recent years, the Ithaca community has faced a doubling of the local unemployment rate, more demand at food pantries, and a reduction in workforce opportunities.  Alternatives is a unique credit union because it focuses on community development in the form of financial education, reasonably priced loans to allow people to build credit, microenterprise development and more. 

Since beginning her AmeriCorps VISTA term, Lauren developed the new Spend Save and Share program at Alternatives.  The Spend Save Share financial education program was developed out of desire to help low-income students develop greater confidence and money management skills.  The program is designed to empower students to make smart spending, saving, and sharing decisions primarily through hands-on entrepreneurial activity and access to the student credit union savings program.

In the participating schools, students have a group meeting during their lunch period to learn the impact of saving by doing spending plans and creating budgets.  The youth then take their skills and plan an entrepreneurial service project, developing teamwork and leadership skills in the process.  The core concepts of the program are: earning, spending, planning and budgeting; entrepreneur development; community engagement and philanthropy; and improved self-esteem and behavior.  By doing these Spend Save and Share groups as well as various other financial education initiatives, Lauren has been able to reach hundreds of youth that may otherwise not had an early opportunity to learn about money and financial planning.  Alternatives feels that this program helps youth understand the power of saving, helps increase the habit of saving in families and has even experienced adults enter the financial system after their children have done the program.  In addition to this work, Lauren also helps with the student credit union savings program that was started in 1990 that is now in place at nine Ithaca area schools.  Spend Share Save was developed as a complimentary piece to the school credit union program where youth can open up savings accounts and deposit money.  Programs like these are the first step in teaching youth about their financial futures and creating a sustainable system for economic self-sufficiency.

Lauren has been with the AmeriCorps VISTA program for almost two years now and has been going over the plans to transition programming over to the Alternatives staff.  Building the program to not only teach local youth about saving money was a new initiative in Ithaca, but what she is most proud of is that the youth learned to be engaged in their communities and developed leadership and self-esteem.  The experience has also influenced her to pursue getting a masters’ degree in social work so that she can continue effecting positive change in the lives of others.