Literacy Programs Responding to Communities in Crisis

Click on Over. . .

FannieMae Foundation Home Buying Guides
The FannieMae Foundation is committed to helping more first-time home buyers learn what it takes to buy a home. Download or order their FREE step-by-step information and help adult learners get started on the path to homeownership. Some of their titles available in several languages include:

• Knowing and Understanding Your Credit
• Opening the Door to a Home of Your Own
• Borrowing Basics: What You Don’t Know Can’t
  Hurt You.

Money Management and Home-buying Readiness: Sourcebook for Teachers of ESOL and ABE.
Developed with The Adult Literacy Resource Institute (University of Massachusetts, Boston) and Fannie Mae Foundation, this sourcebook helps teachers introduce the topic of home buying and money management into adult education classrooms and programs, either as a stand-alone unit or integrated into an existing curriculum. Not a step-by-step implementation guide, the sourcebook allows teachers and administrators to adopt or adapt its contents to meet students’ and programs’ needs. The sourcebook has four major sections:

• Getting Started: Planning, Implementing, and
• Evaluating a Home-Buying Readiness Project;
• Supporting a Home-buying Readiness Project:
• Fundraising and Resource Development;
• Expanding Your Resources: Tools for Teachers; and
• Appendices (glossary of terms, contact information for free resources, and poetry and other writings that talk about home and home-buying).

Money Smart: An Adult Education Program Building Knowledge, Security, Confidence.
The FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) Division of Compliance and Consumer Affairs developed Money Smart to help adults outside the financial mainstream enhance their money skills and create positive banking relationships. Money Smart is a set of ten instructor-led units of instruction covering basic financial topics. Each unit includes a guide for instructors, masters for creating overhead projector transparencies, and resource material for class participants - all reproducible. Although not written at a new reader level, the curriculum could be used in advanced ESL classes.
(Clearinghouse Library also distributes free copies of Money Smart on CD in several languages, and has loan copies of the English and Spanish versions of Money Smart in binder form, available for borrowing.)

NEFE High School Financial Planning Program.
The National Endowment for Financial Education developed this “hands-on” course that provides learning materials to teach students to: identify and prioritize their personal money management goals; develop a budget; track their income and spending to stay within their budget; comprehend the impact of time on the value of money — especially important in achieving savings goals; understand the cost of using credit; and protect their cash assets as they begin to accumulate money. Created with teachers for easy classroom implementation, the six-unit mini-course can be completed in as few as 10 classroom hours. These materials are available at no cost to public and private schools as a public service provided by NEFE, in partnership with the Cooperative Extension Service and America’s Credit Unions.
(Clearinghouse Library also has loan copies of the NEFE High School Financial Planning Program Student Guide and Instructor’s Manual, available for borrowing.)