STEPS for Success

The Steps for Success program provides youth with essential skills required to legally obtain and manage money. We assist youth who are at risk of dropping out of school better understand the direct connection between their education and future earnings, improve their grades, learn how to manage money and personal finance and increase their employment skills so they can be hired and achieve increased assets and decreased liabilities.

The program focuses on two key areas: financial literacy and workforce preparation. Students are taught to view money as a tool to acheive financial independence, not as a means to buy happiness. The program involves students in specific projects that help them make a concrete connection between the skills they are learning in school and those needed to be successful in a global economy.

The STEPS for Success program provides the following activities:

Financial Literacy Instruction

• Credit and credit card education
• Investing Education
• Practical banking education (writing checks, balancing a checkbook, etc.)
• Budgeting

Workforce Preparation Instruction

• Resume writing
• Job skills development thorugh volunteer work
• Career exploration (community volunteers speak with youth about careers and business opportunities)
• Filling out a job application

Tutoring is also provided after school by a teacher with specific training and superivsion in the field of youth development so tutoring becomes a place not only for instruction but enriches the lives of students by promoting positive social norms and consistent rules and limits. Non-traditional teaching methods are provided to expose the students to new experiences and teach them new skills.

Steps for Success, funded by the United Way community impact grant and private foundations and donations, operates out of the Dallas Challenge North Oak Cliff Center.

For more information about the Steps for Success program
please call Karen Jane Justice at 214.942.5166
or e-mail: kjustice@dallaschallenge.org

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