Family Services of Greater Vancouver has offered financial literacy coaching and workshops since 2006. What started as a small program has evolved into a high-impact financial empowerment service that bridges multiple program areas across the agency, serving low-income and at-risk clients.
As Canadians grapple with the affordability crisis across the country, financial empowerment has emerged as a key poverty reduction solution.
The model is about so much more than literacy; it relies on a suite of client-centered financial help tools, resources, and education to help people overcome barriers to building their financial wellbeing.
“The idea that financial education alone will help people with terrible debt problems or complicated financial lives is like asking someone to pick up a medical textbook and heal themselves,” says Liz Mulholland, CEO of Prosper Canada. Finances are complex these days: there are more products, life is more expensive, government programs are difficult to navigate, and there are more financial risks. “All of that means people need specialized support. It needs to be affordable and people need to be able to trust it.”
Prosper Canada is the country’s leading national champion of financial empowerment solutions that help people with low incomes to measurably improve their financial health. FSGV provides direct financial help services to British Columbians, while Prosper Canada works with community partners like FSGV, as well as business, research, and government partners, to develop, test, and scale policies, programs, tools, and resources that enable more Canadians to prosper. We’re two sides of the same coin.
Empowerment is a key value of both organizations. FSGV and Prosper Canada give British Columbians the support they need to pursue their hopes and dreams, to move forward with their lives in the direction they want.
“We don’t see people just in terms of their needs,” explains Liz. “We see people as having extraordinary potential and the capacity to thrive, if we can just provide a little targeted help and remove the barriers in their way.”
Systemic and institutional barriers often prevent people with low incomes from accessing quality, relevant, and appropriate financial services. Prosper Canada’s advocacy helps to dismantle those barriers – with the input of Financial Empowerment Champions like FSGV. As an agency that works directly with clients, we gather real-world insights and feedback. Prosper Canada rolls these up and translates them into advice for governments. “FSGV brings credibility to our role as an advocate,” says Liz.
It goes both ways. In the past year, FSGV has been engaged in advocacy with the Province of BC and partnerships with the financial services sector to expand our reach to as many British Columbians as possible. Our relationship with Prosper Canada adds to our credibility and provides access to stories and evidence from across Canada that prove the efficacy of financial empowerment in reducing poverty.
When asked about the path forward, Liz points to a recent Prosper Canada report documenting the structural gap in the marketplace for appropriate, trustworthy, and affordable financial help for low-income Canadians. “The next step is working with community, financial sector, and government partners to identify solutions to fill this gap, including those for rural, remote, and Indigenous communities, and other vulnerable groups who are currently not being adequately served,” says Liz. “These solutions need to include sustained investment in regional financial empowerment hubs like FSGV.”
This piece originally appeared in our 2022/23 Annual Report. Read the full report here: 2022/23 Annual Report