As news headlines continue to highlight the financial crisis, one of the nation’s oldest financial institutions has collaborated with a progressive civil rights organization to tackle the issue. The initiative, called the One Thousand Churches Connected Save Our Homes Financial Literacy Program, marks an unprecedented collaboration between Wells Fargo and Rainbow PUSH, via its affiliate the Citizenship Education Fund, to help provide educational resources that improve the financial success of African Americans.
Wells Fargo & Company’s ‘Hands on Banking’ program will provide financial education training to African American clergy, parishioners and Wells Fargo customers beginning in 2011.
“The Hands on Banking curriculum is free [and] can be found any day of the week at www.handsonbanking.org. It was designed by real educators and underwritten by Wells Fargo for communities, individuals and small businesses,” Georgette “Gigi” Dixon, senior vice president and director of national partnerships for Wells Fargo & Company, offered at Rainbow PUSH’s 11th Annual Creating Opportunity Conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Atlanta.
“We have a ton of resources around financial education that we want to distribute and we believe that Rainbow PUSH is a great organization that has a broad network that impacts the community and we want to partner with them to get this information out to people,” she continued.
Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., who shared the dais with Dixon, Congressman John Conyers, Rev. Jasper Williams, Jr., and keynote speaker Dr. Otis Moss, addressed the crowd about the results of the recent midterm elections and admonished those who didn’t exercise their right to vote by saying, “No one has earned the right to do less.”
Rev. Jackson also encouraged attendees to read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s books Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community and Why We Can’t Wait, which examines the history of the civil rights struggle and serves as a blueprint for community organizers. –yvette caslin
Photo Captions:
Rev. Jesse Jackson and Georgette “Gigi” Dixon, senior vice president and director of national partnerships for Wells Fargo & Company
Glinda Gill, executive director of Rainbow PUSH Los Angeles Bureau and Congressman John Conyers
