Future Focused Academy: Helping Young Adults Succeed

Contributed

Erie's Future Focused Academy is a newly formed nonprofit that helps to prepare freshly graduated young people to understand and manage their personal finances in a knowledgeable and responsible way, bridging a financial-literacy gap left by most high schools. Founder Danielle Randall has helped educate five cohorts of five to eight students each, to date.

Thinking back, what lessons can you remember from high school? Maybe you can string together a sentence from your language course or tell someone that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. But can you recall any lessons that taught you about taxes and how they apply to you, what insurance is and how it works, or even how to write a check?

Having worked in the financial industry for close to a decade, I've witnessed firsthand many people under the age of 30 who aren't familiar with these concepts, but it is through no fault of their own. As a society, we benchmark success in schools on test scores and not much else – don't get me wrong, some of the information learned is important and necessary to know, but too often kids memorize the information for a test to then push it from their minds to memorize the next data set.

Danielle Randall also saw the dilemma in these important life lessons missing from the curriculum. Having started in the Erie School District as a substitute teacher, she soon realized that these things should be taught to young adults getting ready for the real world.

In her final year as a substitute, Randall was working with 12th grade students, many of whom would come to her for advice and help. "These are kids that are getting ready to graduate and in the eyes of society, are going to be adults and are just expected to know all these things," Randall said. "They would start coming to me, asking for a lot of this information, which is when I realized that we are not preparing these kids."

"But a lot of young adults don't feel they have a trusted source to go to for this information, or they don't have someone that can help set them on a path to where they need to be," she continued. "I wanted to develop a program that could lead them to, not only the information, but also to those trusted sources."

Randall then designed the curriculum for Future Focused Academy with 18- to 22-year-olds in mind: "I started finding that this age group is what I call the 'forgotten demographic' – we have so much programming for K through 12, but then when they turn 18 and leave high school, there's really no programming for them," she said. "And I found that these young adults are in the most need for this information, because they're now trying to function like adults but don't have the right tools."

The vision was simple and straightforward: create a curriculum that teaches young adults important topics like insurance, building credit, and networking, and also applies those lessons to real-life situations, allowing the students to better understand how they work in everyday life. The vision has grown as the program has continued.

"I originally only designed the program as a 6-week cohort, but as the first group was finishing, they said they wanted more," Randall said. "I knew it wouldn't make sense for them to go back through the same information, so that's when I developed the second level of the program."

So far, Randall has had five cohorts completed in total (three in level one and two in level two), with each composed of between five to eight young adults to help foster a community feeling while also being able to give individualized attention when needed. Level one classes include the topics of banking, credit, the "Financial Trap," budgeting, insurance, and networking, while level two focuses on career-related classes (applications and resumes, interview skills, professional communication), taxes, more advanced insurance, and housing.

Future Focused Academy's community partners include Radius Co-Work, Erie County Community College, the Erie Center for Arts & Technology (ECAT), Erie Federal Credit Union, Erie's Black Wall Street, ERIEBANK, the Erie Downtown Development Corporation, and French Creek Settlement Services. Each of these organizations has worked to show how many of the program's topics apply to real-world workplaces and situations and have provided opportunities for networking and growth to the students.

The program also equips students with a head-start on their financial journey – completing the course along with other prerequisites can earn each participant up to $500. Some have saved those funds, while others have helped their families or put it towards an important purchase like a vehicle or college supplies. One alum even used it to start his own business and register an LLC.

Thanks to their tour of ECAT, one Future Focused alum went on to attend and graduate in the first class of ECAT's Freedom House Foundation – a 5-week program sponsored by UPMC Health Plan that focuses on teaching basic healthcare topics while also introducing the variety of careers available in the healthcare industry. "For me, that's what it's really about," Randall said. "It's helping them make connections within the community, to find what they want to pursue."

Another alum, Anthony, is currently earning his associate's degree from the Erie County Community College before he continues his education at Mercyhurst with a focus in paleontology. For him, the program really broadened his view on life after high school: "School doesn't really prepare you for [real life], they only tell you there's a few pathways to take when really there's thousands of them."

"Even if you know what you want to do, I think joining the program is a good way to get your foot in the door, to learn the things that you didn't learn in school," Anthony continued. "There are so many things you have to go through when you turn 18, and you have no clue how to do any of them because you're not prepared – this program helps prepare you for a lot of those things."

Future Focused Academy is participating in Erie Gives Day, on Tuesday, Aug. 12. Visit eriegives.org to make a donation.

Ally Kutz is a freelance writer and avid book reader who helps organize the Erie Reader Book Club. She can be reached at ally.kutz1@gmail.com.