Helen Jones Foundation Awards: Revamping 50 Personal Finance Activities

Personal Finance Faculty Grant to Better Lubbock Community

Personal Finance Instructor, Jennifer Wilson, was selected to receive a $20,000 grant from the Helen Jones Foundation in support of Revamping 50 Personal Finance Activities, a program designed to implement financial education activities throughout the Lubbock area.

To be selected, the Helen Jones Foundation, Inc. looks for projects that will impact the Lubbock community or surrounding communities through unique service and educational opportunities for Texas Tech students.

This accomplishment is one that will facilitate Jennifer's already strong commitment to community outreach. Since 2016, Jennifer has been teaching the service-learning based Financial Counseling and Consumer Credit course. During that time, 50 interactive games and activities were created based on a wide range of personal finance topics.

The financial support will provide for a formal curriculum for Texas Tech University's financial capability campus programs with the potential for community partners to be established across Lubbock.

"I'm really looking forward to showcasing the hard work my students have done over the past couple of years in designing games/activities," Jennifer said. "Plus, having the chance to bring everything together to make a curriculum for the community has been a goal of mine since I've been teaching the Financial Counseling and Consumer Credit course, so I'm very excited for this opportunity and ready to get started on the project."

The next steps for Jennifer are to finalize the project completion timeline and to prepare for implementation.

"The community will gain financial educational tools and provide an opportunity for individuals and families to increase their awareness about local resources," she said. "The curriculum development would allow us to package the activities and promote them to organizations that are doing financial capability work in the community."

Jennifer says that this project will build and maintain a positive presence in the community by
providing personal finance expertise and raise awareness in the community about the importance of seeking appropriate, evidence-based information when making personal finance decisions.