ADVANCE Program (Vocational ESL, Job Skills, and Financial Literacy)

Building Skills Partnership Founded in 2000, the Building Skills Partnership (BSP) is a non-profit collaboration between SEIU-USWW and responsible businesses to provide services, training and educational programs that improve the quality of life of low-wage property service workers and their families by increasing their skills, access to education, and opportunities for career and community advancement and participation. The Building Skills Partnership represents a partnership between over 45 building service companies, over 35 building owners, the SEIU-USWW, and community agencies. The Building Skills Partnership, through its collaboration with SEIU-USWW, has an unprecedented access to 40,000 registered property services workers in California most of which are immigrant. Each year the Building Skills Partnership trains over 1,000 low-wage workers in Vocational ESL, Job Skills, Financial Literacy, Health and Safety, Computer Literacy, Leadership and other life skills. In partnership with employers, trainings take place at large worksites and smaller community locations across Los Angeles, East Bay, Silicon Valley, Orange County, Sacramento and San Diego. Financial Literacy Need According to the 2000 Survey of Income Program Participation (SIPP), 34% of Latino families and 32% of immigrant families are unbanked.1 A survey conducted in partnership with SEIU-USWW has also found that the percentage of low-wage janitors and other building service workers who become homeowners is fewer than 10%. The Building Skills Partnership participants are over 70% women and primarily immigrants from Latin America. Less than 30% are formally educated beyond the 6th grade. Limited English, full work schedules, unusual working hours, limited budgets, and lack of transportation often prevent low-wage service workers from attending financial literacy training offered by financial institutions or other community programs.

New immigrants face several obstacles to using the U.S. banking system, including a distrust of banks, a language barrier, lack of knowledge about banking and lack of documentation. As a result of these barriers, new immigrants — and even more established immigrants — pay excessive fees for check cashing and services to send money to their home countries. Consequently, immigrants routinely become targets for thieves because of large amounts of cash kept at home.

Pilot Program In response to an unmet need, the Building Skills Partnership developed and launched a financial literacy component training within its ADVANCE Program in Northern California. The ADVANCE Program is a 70-hour Vocational English and Job Skills training. The Building Skills Partnership ensures the collaboration of employers, the union, and building owners so that classes are held at the worksite in a formal conference room.

1 Hawke, John D., (Fall 2000), “Focus on Retail Financial Services to Underserved Communities”, Community

Developments (OCC).

ADVANCE Program (Vocational ESL, Job Skills, and Financial Literacy)

Employers provide employee release time to attend each class on an hour of paid work-time, which ensures near perfect attendance. A sample of participating building sites and companies include: Adobe, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Toyota, Warner Center, Dreamworks and City National Towers. In 2007, the Building Skills Partnership trained over 60 service workers at Novartis and Bank of America towers in San Francisco. The pilot successfully increased these workers capacity to make informed financial decisions and better manage and invest their money, ensuring greater economic stability and stronger futures for their families. The financial literacy program covered the following core topics below.

Financial Literacy Curriculum 1. Budgeting 2. Bank Accounts and Services 3. Savings and Investments 4. Transferring money abroad 5. How to establish and determine credit – FICO 6. Maintaining good credit 7. Loans and Personal Banking 8. Mortgages & Home-buying 9. Bankruptcy Participant Comments: “I learned how to save money and how to teach my children how to save money.” -Rocio Delgado "The program taught me a lot about credit cards and home loans. They told us important things." - Veronica Benavidez “I learned how a loan works and how to speak to someone at a bank.” -Patricia Ramirez "I learned how to save money." - Rocio Delgado Staff Comments: “The financial literacy training added excitement and pace to our Workplace English program. Students quickly saw that the training was designed to address the exact interests and needs they had expressed in a pre-class survey.” -Kathy Aparicio, BSP instructor