Immigrants & Financial Empowerment Services: Best Practices for Integrating Financial Empowerment with Citizenship Programs
Hosted by the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs
Location: Greenpoint and Williamsburg
The naturalization process provides a unique moment of opportunity for building the financial capabilities of immigrants who, according to research, stand to gain increased earnings once they have become US Citizens. While this presents a compelling rationale for integrating citizenship and financial empowerment services, connecting immigrants to financial empowerment services has proven to be a challenge for service providers and local governments. In an effort to tackle this challenge, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA) and Citi have engaged Parsons DESIS Lab and students of the Transdisciplinary Design graduate program to use innovative service design methods to create new concepts that would effectively link MOIA’s citizenship participants to financial empowerment services. This session will bring representatives from MOIA, Citi Community Development, the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, Parsons, and CASA to discuss the challenges and opportunities for connecting citizenship and financial empowerment services, provide concrete examples of models that attempt to tackle this problem, and lead an interactive discussion of best practices.
Speakers:
- Nisha Agarwal, Commissioner, NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs
- Aya Jaffar, MFA Candidate, Transdisciplinary Design Graduate Program at the New School’s Parsons School of Design
- Frances Liu, Program Manager, Citi Community Development
- Cathie Mahon,President / CEO, Federation of Community Development Credit Unions
- Lara Penin, Director, Transdisciplinary Design Graduate Program at the New School’s Parsons School of Design
- Gustavo Torres, Executive Director, CASA