Adulting 101 Recap

We are so excited to announce the completion of our Adulting 101 cohort! As our mentees have started to move out of high school and start their adult lives, they asked for more resources for this transition. Many are financially responsible for bills while also being in school full time. We want to start creating opportunities for youth to build this wealth so they can make a change and teach others.

We held four different workshops, two in March and two in April. Our first two workshops were held by Jasmine, our co-founder, and ED. She led our youth through a money-healing and budgeting workshop. Stephanie, our board president, led our third workshop surrounding the credit building. The last session was led by Mariel of Money for Mujeres, which introduced investing and opening up their Roth IRA accounts.

Here are some thoughts from our participants on the impact of Adulting 101:

Maya, Spring 21’ Mentee

“After Adulting 101 I can proudly say that I have saved so much money by tracking my spending habits. Additionally, I have started my Roth IRA and believe I can retire a millionaire. There is so much I have learned from just over 4 weeks and how I can apply it to the rest of my life.”

Tracy, Spring 22’ Mentee

“Adulting 101 really helped me conceptualize my future in ways I didn’t think possible. This short, but valuable workshop helped me understand the ins and outs of being a young adult and did what I feel like wonders for my success going forward.”

Thank you to our facilitators and youth for showing up with curiosity and compassion!

What Brings You Joy?

Can you believe we’re already on week 11 of mentorship!? It has gone by so fast. We are so grateful for everything our mentees have achieved and learned so far! To start off week 11 Jasmine, our co-founder & ED, led a discussion around the question, ‘What brings you joy?”. The Mentees discussed if they valued experiences over materialistic items. As well as if they preferred eating out or eating in? Jasmine shared the importance of adding experiences and activities that bring joy to your budget. Whatever brings you joy is always in the budget.

To resume our photoshoot from Saturday, our mentees brought in props and equipment to get the rest of the photos that were needed for their websites. Each group had different tasks to complete. Jocelyn and Tracy’s group staged Tracy’s clothes with his paints to get the best photo needed for his website, while Kendall and Jamia got some cool shots of Kendall playing his Nintendo Switch for his brand. It is always great to see our mentees work together as a team while building their businesses.

Photo Credit: Mariah

Budgeting 101

Photo Credit: Mariah

After an amazing spring break, our mentees returned this week. We started the first day of week 7 mentorship with an ice breaker asking, “What are two things that make you unique?”. Afterward, we discussed ideas for community projects. During our Summer 2021 mentorship, we had two groups create a community project. This first group project was Conversation Food Desert, where a group of mentees started up a conversation about Maywood being a food desert. The second group project was Maywoodian Families, this group found families in our community and photographed them, along with a series of questions and answers. These projects were shown to our current spring mentees to get inspiration for their community projects.

After our dialogue on community projects, we welcomed Stephanie, a TFD board member, to lead a workshop on how to budget. It was so great to see our mentees engage in a dialogue about financial wellness; one of our three pillars at TFD. Stephanie shared tips & advice on how to understand the process of budgeting, practical budgeting tools, and encouraged budgeting.

As a group, our 8 mentees created a mock college student budget of $2,000 along with a list of expenses. This individual was responsible for: car insurance, gas, textbooks, food, wants, household items, savings, credit card debt, cell phone, rent, and investments. It was amazing to see how invested our mentees were in this workshop. We cannot wait for the next one!

Photo Credit: Mariah

Budgeting Workshop

Budgeting is a huge topic that most people don’t touch upon until they are older and here at The Firehouse Dream we value teaching our mentees key life skills such as budgeting. Jasmine our executive director got our mentees thinking about how they want to value the money they earn.

Thank you Jasmine for showing our mentees an essential skill!