Helping to Build Client’s Financial Skills Tool Box Many times when individuals encounter financial troubles—whether it is a job loss, they have always been in poverty and they want better, or they simply don’t know how to manage money—they are often at a loss as to how to find their way out because they do not have the necessary tools. In a welcoming, nonjudgmental environment, the team at SparkPoint is helping people find their way out of money troubles by giving them the tools necessary to become financially self-sufficient, according to Betty Geishirt-Cantrell, executive director of both Contra Costa SparkPoint centers. “We find that we help two types of people: folks who are in situtational poverty, those who may have lost their jobs and now they really need help getting back to where they were; then we have folks who come from generational poverty, it is what their families By Jeannie Howard have lived with and that is all they know, so those are folks more in need of the financial education and just knowing that there are options available.” With the goal of making it easier for people to access the services and tools they need and, as Geishirt- Cantrell said, often don’t know are available, the United Way decided to open the first SparkPoint center in Oakland in 2009, and later in Contra Costa County in 2011, after discovering that 1 in 4 Bay Area families were not able make endsmeat. “Say people need to do credit counseling, they need to work with a career coach, or they need the help of a financial coach in coming up with a budget, instead of going to three different places they can do all of that at SparkPoint,” she described. Receiving their funding directly from the United Way, SparkPoint is able to offer their cache of services and expert staff
Contra Costa Marketplace - April 2016
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