CDA Conference Blog

My posts from the recent Children & Youth Savings Conference can be found over at the conference blog. I didn’t take pictures, so you’ll just have to imagine the scene. Thanks to the CFED staff for a great conference.

CFED promised to post the slides from each session on their website eventually. Keep an eye out for that.

Children & Youth Savings Conference Underway

Made it to Brooklyn today, with the family in tow, feeling like country bumpkins as we left behind the dirt road in Vermont for a few days in the big city. The girls can’t stop singing “NYC” from Annie. My older daughter is a fan of The Apprentice. She looked out the hotel window, saw a limo go by on Adams Street, and screamed “There’s Donald Trump.”

The conference kicked off with a nice reception tonight. Some of the welcoming remarks came from Jonathan Mintz, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs. His words really resonated for me. He noted how the unfortunate tragedy that has been unfolding with our country’s economic crisis has made this a time of tremendous opportunity for people working in asset building and financial empowerment. New ideas and initiatives at all levels of government and civil society are taking root and gaining traction thanks in part to the urgency that people feel about our broken economy. It felt almost as if he knew all about SaveTogether and could have been referring to our project specifically.

I’ve already had the chance to talk up SaveTogether to a number of interesting people at the conference. They all seem really excited about what we’re doing. And I was able to meet a few CFED people face-to-face whom I had talked with on the phone and by email these past months but had never actually met in person. I can tell it’s going to be a busy and exciting few days.

What Good Company

Less than 48 hours until the start of CFED’s National Children & Youth Savings Conference. Should be a hoot. That is, if your idea of a hoot is learning about the latest in financial education and matched savings strategies for children and youth, which happens to fit within my definition of a hoot.

As conference blogger, I’ve been able to read the bios and aspirations of some of the other “scholars” who will be attending thanks to the generosity of conference scholarship sponsors including the College Success Foundation.

It’s an inspiring array of visionaries, from a woman who developed a children’s savings account program in a community in Puerto Rico serving “every child born within the municipality’s boundaries ” to another woman who was the “project leader for launching the Texas Saves YouTube Build Wealth Video Competition…where high school teens were encouraged to create 60-second PSAs on why savings is important.”

Representatives of some long-time leaders in the asset-building and youth services fields are among the scholars, including Southern Good Faith Fund in Arkansas and CASA of Oregon. But there are also emerging leaders of much younger organizations such as Bik’eh Hozho Community Development Corporation serving the residents of native American reservations in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, and Jr.Finance Literacy Academy in Grand Prairie, Texas.

As usual, I’m sure I will feel it’s far too little time to connect with all the people I would like to introduce myself to at this conference. But even meeting a fraction of them will make the trip tremendously worthwhile. Hope to see you there on Sunday.