Financial Education

Ariva’s Rise Up! Light Up Your Financial Future is a comprehensive, eight-hour financial education workshop series program for low-wealth New Yorkers in English and Spanish. Ariva’s financial education workshop series helps our clients:

increase their knowledge of basic personal finance,
create and live by a family budget,
establish and increase savings,
manage debt,
establish or repair credit,
avoid identity theft and credit repair scams,
and more!

The Need for Financial Education is Great

Ariva created the program to meet low-wealth adults’ financial needs and goals. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the South Bronx is the poorest Congressional district in the northeast; thirty-eight percent of South Bronx residents live below the poverty line (approximately $22,000 for a family of four), while almost one in two South Bronx children live in poverty.

A research brief by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs’ Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE) shows that families are living from paycheck to paycheck, with very limited capacity to get out of debt, save and plan for the future. In the Highbridge neighborhood (where Ariva is based), 95 percent of the families have no discretionary income after basic living expenses are paid. Ariva’s survey of our lower-income free tax preparation program clients (mostly Bronx-based) show that 59 percent want information about improving their credit score, 30 percent would like to save, and 28 percent are interested in stretching their money.

Ariva’s Rise Up! Light Up Your Financial Future Makes a Difference

90 percent of Ariva clients rated Ariva’s Rise Up! Light Up Your Financial Future financial education program “very helpful”, and 10 percent rated it helpful.

Six months after “graduation” more than 2/3 of participants increased their credit scores by an average of 18 points and decreased debt levels by an average of $1,185.

Find Out What Clients Have to Say About Ariva …