In this episode we explore the groundbreaking work of financial health pathways and it’s transformative ISA Texas programs with Lourdes G Zuniga the organizations executive director discover how this community driven initiative is revolutionizing financial education and resources to uplift low income Texans from partnership opportunities for organizations to the streamline process for participant enrollment. Our conversation provides valuable insight into how ISA Texas is charting a course towards enhanced financial well-being for individuals and families across the state.
Lourdes G. Zuniga is a social impact leader a presidential leadership scholar and a founder member of the UNICEF USA Austin task force, a journalist from Peru and faculty for the Texas Justice Court Training Center, Lourdes drives innovative solutions to systematic issues and fights the criminalization of poverty and the justice system Lourdes supports philanthropy education in the Hispanic community and she was recognized by the Austin Business Journal as 2021 most influential women in Central Texas. ABJ 2022 best CEO finalist and several others, Lourdes has joined the inaugural bis Women Leadership Council and is a proud alumina from the LBJ Women campaign inaugural class. Her remarkable story as an immigrant who came to the United States with nothing, shapes her servant leadership and is the reason she has been recognized locally and nationally.
Christina- Can you provide an overview of Financial Health Pathways and the mission behind the “I Save Texas!” program?
Lourdes- Financial Health Pathways is an organization that is a little bit of a hybrid organization, we have two signature programs our “I Save Texas” and our “Financial Justice Program” that are designed to not just deliver education and content but help people practice and implement a lot of our teachings we realized after a few years with the organization that, you can deliver education to a lot of people but if the systems are not equipped to help people and allow people to develop their own path to success and to build their own wealth then we’re just basically conducting training so we decided to add an advocacy piece to that.
Christina-What inspired the creation of the “I Save Texas!” program, and how does it address the financial challenges faced by low-income families in Texas?
Lourdes- I wanted to be able to raise money to give it out to all the people that perhaps really want to build their wealth but they don’t know how and also because people think that you know saving money is difficult or painful and that’s why we ask $20 a month, it’s because I think that is pretty doable and most people think of money as “all or nothing” you kind of have to save and be miserable or you don’t save and you can enjoy life and spend money.
Christina- Who is eligible to participate in this program?
Lourdes- This program is basically for anyone over 18 years old, having a bank account and having a partnership with us. For us to enroll a participant we have to have a partnership agreement with their organization, so anyone that is an EGBI client will be able to enroll themselves in the program and answer the question of who referred you.
Christina-What steps are involved in completing the intake form and joining the program?
Lourdes- The intake form is really just a demographic, we don’t share this in a disaggregated way it’s just, we want to know who we’re serving. So it’s basically completing some assessment of demographics and also their financial health. There are eight questions that we ask, how confident do they feel about their insurance or how confident they feel that they make enough income to pay for their basic needs so they’re just very general questions.
Find the Spanish version here.