Since then, what have you done with your toolkit? Have you used it to train your co-workers? Have you used it to start conversations about financial well-being with clients?
If the answers to these questions is “yes,” we are so proud of you!
If the answer is “no, I hate to admit it, but I’ve been using the toolkit as a plant stand,” we hear you. The Your Money, Your Goals (YMYG) training is a great first step. But some of us need a bit more support on steps two and three as well.
The YMYG toolkit is a robust resource with a great deal of information and many tools. We’ve led a lot of YMYG train-the-trainer sessions and at the end of each we have encouraged participants to engage in self-study to ensure that they become very familiar with the toolkit and find ways to integrate it into their work. We also ask that participants, in turn, commit to training others. But it can be hard to fit self-study into an already overfull work-day. And it can take a bit of practice with the toolkit to become comfortable enough to train others.
If this sounds like your relationship with the toolkit – “It’s such a great resource but I just haven’t gotten around to using it much or training my co-workers” – please consider joining us as we launch our YMYG Learning Cohort. We’d like to invite folks who have already attended a YMYG training to spend a couple of hours a month with us studying the toolkit in more depth.
During our monthly meetings, cohort participants will be asked to review a section of the toolkit with one another. We will assign some homework in between – reading and research related to the next month’s toolkit section, information collection on resources related to toolkit, outreach to potential referral providers related to toolkit, etc. Facilitation of the meetings will rotate between cohort members so that all cohort members have an opportunity to “teach” a section of the toolkit and practice facilitation with their peers. By the end of the cohort, you should find yourself using the toolkit with clients and ready to teach your peers how to use it.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the toolkit, it was created by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and was designed to help front line staff and volunteers start engaging the people they serve in conversations about financial well-being. Make sure to check out the toolkit and also read more about what our toolkit trainings look like. If you want to participate in a YMYG training, please send us an email and we will keep you updated about when those are scheduled.
If you are interested in participating in either the YMYG Learning Cohort or a YMYG training, please email Jill Winsor.
The Learning Cohort will launch at the end of October. The deadline for inquiries is October 7th, 2016.