People’s Community Action Corporation (PCAC) became a designated Community Action Agency for the state of Missouri in 2012 and part of the Missouri Association for Community Action (MACA), a network of 19 community action agencies across the state aimed at relieving the degradation of poverty in Missouri. PCAC serves underprivileged and underserved individuals located in the cities of St. Louis and Wellston Missouri. PCAC is the community action entity under the umbrella of Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers (PHC), a Federally Qualified Health Center that has provided healthcare and community action services to St. Louis City and County for over 40 years. Also under the PHC umbrella are Hopewell and Health & Dental for Kids.
Since its inception, PCAC’s remarkable accomplishments addressing the diverse needs of the St. Louis and Wellston communities, center on financial literacy and workforce development. The PCAC staff has decades of experience in these areas; as well as, community/individual assessment, community action program implementation, case management, nutrition services, conflict resolution programming, resume writing, and dressing for success/interviewing seminars.
People’s Community Action Corporation plays a major leadership role in integrating financial empowerment into its programs and community action network. Through the St. Louis Regional Unbanked Task Force, and Bank-On Save-Up initiatives, PCAC has worked tirelessly in a committed effort towards building a community-wide program for financial empowerment. The action plan entitled “Get Banked Now” is an effort to connect low-income and economically vulnerable people to financial education and mainstream financial services, such as opening bank accounts, maintaining those accounts, financial literacy training, mortgage counseling, home ownership, etc. These PCAC led programs are under the direction of Mr. Mark Sanford, Executive Vice President and leadership of Lisa Potts, Manager of Financial Services.
Another noteworthy PCAC program is On the Money. The On the Money Magazine is a financially focused magazine developed and published by teens for teens from throughout the Saint Louis region. The online and in-print magazine seeks to promote financial empowerment from a youth perspective through journalism, photography, visual art, interviews and featured articles on youth jobs, culture, finance, and entrepreneurship. With engaging content, we are seeking to influence teens towards positive and sustainable financial decision-making for themselves, their peers and their families. OTM is focused on defining a new narrative around finance, one that captures the attention of teens in order to instill greater financial literacy and capability as they transition to adulthood. In fact, the St. Louis American has featured several OTM articles in previous Money Wise Inserts and we are most proud of having produced our very own St. Louis American Insert.
OTM is an example of how we embed financial literacy into workforce development programming. Other examples include HireSmart, the Customer Care Agent Apprenticeship Program and Painters’ Program. All these programs incorporate financial literacy into their training models that include a combination of classroom and on the job training. All programs have prerequisites of customer service, communication, and financial literacy.
In addition to PCAC-sponsored financial empowerment programs, we are partners with the Financial Education Collaborative – a 100-plus member partnership of community organizations and financial partners that implement Money Smart Week. It is a national public awareness campaign to educate people on how to make better choices about their money. This year, Money Smart Week is April 22-29, 2017, where organizers plan more than 100 free classes and events throughout the metro area to help people improve their relationship with money. PCAC is proud to be one of the founding partners for the Office of Financial Empowerment – an initiative of the City Treasurer’s Office. PCAC underwrote the cost of the computer lab – which provides free access to regular financial empowerment classes.
Other community wide initiatives include the Pastor’s Breakfast and Unified Message Day – both designed to provide financial empowerment and training to pastors and the community at large via our ten-week Money Matters Series. Bank-On Save-Up also offers a mini grant to non- profit partners to help offset the costs associated with hosting financial literacy classes (snacks, gift cards, baby sitting – whatever is necessary to remove attendance barriers).
People’s is committed to integrating financial services into all of their agency services and programs and to have case managers trained to effectively work with families designing individual programs geared to reach their financial goals.
- BJK Health Center: www.phcenters.org
- People’s Community Action Agency (PCAC): www.pcacstl.org
- On the Money Magazine: www.onthemoneystl.org
- St. Louis American OTM Insert: http://www.stlamerican.com/eedition/page-m/page_2fba6c87-d660-503a-99ff-92aa4ff8748c.html
- St. Louis Regional Unbanked Task Force: www.stlunbanked.org
- Bank-On Save-Up St. Louis: www.getbankednow.org
