Phase one of The Rainy Day Project – May 2007
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The Rainy Day Project
A new and innovative program which seeks to assist those members of
the Aboriginal community who are struggling with money management
issues by utilizing a pro-active & interactive approach.
A Public Report Presented By:
The Rainy Day Project is made possible through funding from:
The
Edmonton Financial
Literacy Society
Phase one of The Rainy Day Project – May 2007
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Executive Summary
The purpose of phase one of the Rainy Day Project was to modify The Edmonton
Financial Literacy Society’s existing Financial Literacy material to contain a
Traditional Aboriginal Culture and Values component, and to then evaluate the
impact of the changes.
This was a ground breaking project - we are not aware of any other organization
within North America that has made this kind of change to a ‘modern western’
developed course. This added a new spiritual dynamic to the approach of money
management, and facilitated a greater understanding of traditional teaching and
values to members of the Aboriginal community.
From the completion of phase one, EFLS now has a greater understanding of the
strengths and weaknesses of this approach, and has already developed solutions to
improve on the excellent results from phase one. One of the other great innovations
of this project was based on EFLS’S approach to working in the community. Its
mandate is to, wherever possible, work in partnership with, and build on the skills of,
other specialist community organizations. This project is a great example of
community collaboration, and how the capacity of a project can be increased
exponentially by collaborations.
One of the best testimonies as to the success of phase one can be seen in the
comments made by participants in the evaluation section, and their numeric course
evaluations. The over all ranking of the course (from 1=poor to 10=excellent) was
on average 9.25 out of 10.
I am also delighted to report that EFLS has now secured a large portion of the
funding r