United Way of Central and Northeastern Connecticut launched a Women’s Leadership Council Oct. 20, announcing plans to implement financial education programs at one of the Hartford Community Schools.

The United Way Women’s Leadership Council will fund a Financial Empowerment Coordinator who will work at the Alfred E. Burr School in Hartford’s South End to coordinate an array of financial education programs and opportunities for parents and neighborhood residents. For example, classes on budgeting, credit, and banking will be offered, as will one-on-one financial counseling, privately funded matched savings accounts, and volunteer budget coaching. The program will also create a social network for participants to support each other as they change their behaviors to improve their personal finances.

At each community school, a lead nonprofit agency coordinates the services, and the schools remain open well beyond the hours of a regular school day so that students’ families and others in the neighborhood can make use of a wide variety of educational, cultural, medical and social services. 

The United Way Women’s Leadership Council will focus on celebrating the power of women as leaders to bring about lasting change in the community. Members of the United Way Women’s Leadership Council will become part of a national movement.  More than 130 United Ways across the country have women’s leadership programs that engage more than 32,000 women in solving their communities’ most pressing problems.  The program at Burr School will be a partnership between United Way; Hartford Community Schools; Hartford Public Schools; the Village for Families and Children, which is the lead nonprofit agency at Burr School; and Co-opportunity Inc., the organization that will be providing the financial education.

Members of the Women’s Leadership Council will spend the next year fundraising for the program at Burr School and engaging in volunteer and educational endeavors around the issues of family financial stability. For more information or to get involved, call Brooke Penders at United Way at (860) 493-6849.