Overview

Key Takeaway

Layering banking access and financial education into summer job program infrastructure is a tangible, practical way to bring financial empowerment to scale.

This report, Summer Jobs Connect: Where Strong Financial Futures Begin details the Summer Jobs Connect (SJC) model and serves as a resource for local governments and their nonprofit partners who are looking to add financial empowerment strategies — banking access and financial education – into their Summer Youth Employment Programs.

Summer Jobs Connect is an ambitious initiative spearheaded by the Citi Foundation and the CFE Fund to support young adults seeking summer employment, enhancing these municipally-led programs by integrating structural linkages to safe and appropriate banking products, services, and education.

This report summarizes lessons learned from four years of SJC implementation with thirteen city partners, along with research on youth attitudes and beliefs about savings and banking.

 

Additional Takeaways

City partners worked towards long-term sustainability of SJC banking practices by building programmatic linkages and partnerships, as well as deeply embedding financial empowerment into SYEP infrastructure.

SYEP youth, through financial empowerment, have built agency and developed connections to financial institutions, and plan to maintain their accounts, especially for post-summer employment.

Overall, 86.5% of SJC survey respondents planned to keep their checking account after their summer job ended, with 89.2% planning to keep their savings account

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