Center on Assets, Education, and Inclusion

In this episode we discuss how NYC Kids RISE in New York City is helping families build assets to pay for college and career training through a novel innovation, called Community Scholarships. Community Scholarships provide an innovative mechanism to drive additional capital into children's savings accounts. Functionally, Community Scholarships are contributions to groups of NYC Scholarship Accounts through a donation to NYC Kids RISE. NYC Kids RISE deposits 100% of the donations received for Community Scholarships into the NYC Scholarship Accounts of the designated group of students.

In this episode we talk with Michael Sherraden, George Warren Brown Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in Saint Louis, founding Director of the Center for Social Development, and author of Assets and the Poor the transformational book in which he dared to suggest poverty was more than lack of income, but also a lack of wealth. We discuss several topics such as what has changed since writing the book, what is the current state of asset building in the US, what are the prospects for major federal policy, and where is asset building research and policy heading in the next decade.

In this episode, Willie Elliott and Melinda Lewis interviewed Ray Boshara to unpack the intricacies of Senator Bob Casey’s 401Kids savings account proposal. This legislative effort aims to merge the success of existing CSA programs with new federal initiatives to create a robust, inclusive financial platform for the next generation.

New research from the Canada Education Savings Plan suggests that kids with savings in an account are more likely to attend and complete a postsecondary degree and have less debt when they leave than kids who do not.

In Episode 2 of the Tangible Hope Podcast we discuss the role of education as an equalizer, the student debt crisis, its impact on the return on a degree, and what to do about it. We have recently written a report on this topic and if this topic is interesting you might also want to take a look at it as well, you can find it and related materials here.

In Episode 1 of the Tangible Hope Podcast we discuss what we mean when we use the phrase tangible dreams and how asset intervention can help provide children and their families with an environment rich for dreaming.