WealthRYTS Fellowship
A fellowship offering professional and organizational development while advancing financial inclusion for young adults.
The WealthRYTS Fellowship is MyPath’s response to the growing demand among young people and youth-serving organizations and systems for trusted, culturally responsive financial guidance for young adults as they navigate their financial lives and decisions. MyPath engaged partners, financial coaches and young people in designing an approach that would align with the needs and hopes we heard articulated in the design discovery process. Drawing on those insights and our lessons from a decade of delivering financial mentoring to young adults, largely within workforce, foster care and guaranteed income programs and systems, we endeavored to design a model that would ensure financial mentoring be:
- Culturally and contextually relevant, and trauma and healing informed
- Centered on young people’s values and goals, meeting them where they are
- Part of a broader financial capability strategy adopted by organizational leadership
- Embedded within existing young adult program services (workforce, re-entry, health and foster care) for both a seamless experience and for sustainability
Mindful of these goals, the WealthRYTS Fellowship leverages existing trusted relationships and settings by engaging youth workers already working closely with young adults, as well as their organizational leadership, and it centers two kinds of expertise, both vital to effective financial engagement with young adults: (1) lived experience brought into the fellowship experience by youth worker fellows, and (2) financial expertise via a nationally recognized financial coaching training and certification program. WealthRYTS weaves them together through MyPath’s youth financial mentoring framework, and simultaneously engages organizational leadership through a Financial Capability (FinCap) Toolkit designed to support the development of an organizational FinCap strategy with impact measures.
In short, WealthRYTS offers both professional development to emerging nonprofit leaders with lived experience, supporting them to become certified financial coaches and mentors, while providing technical assistance to organizational leaders to embed financial capability and wealth-building strategies in their organizations. This approach institutionalizes FinCap and makes financial mentoring delivery ongoing and sustainable. At scale, WealthRYTS has the potential to expand access to high-quality financial mentoring for young adults in a variety of settings, from workforce to housing support to foster care to re-entry and more.
Why This Fellowship Matters
Too many young adults navigate the transition into adulthood without effective financial guidance, in particular youth facing structural barriers, paying billions in fees and interest that could have gone toward their goals and establishing the foundations of financial security and wealth-building. Financial stress and anxiety are on the rise among young adults in the current economy, and emerging FinTechs are vying for their attention and engagement. While this very real need exists – as well as a related growing interest in delivering effective financial education and guidance to young people – the field of financial coaching is not equipped to address it. Very few financial coaches across the country boast lived experience, key to establishing the trust required for engagement and impact, and if they do, the cost for their services over time is not sustainable. WealthRYTS bridges that gap by preparing nonprofit professionals with lived experience who are already working with young adults to embed FinCap in their services and rewrite financial futures in their communities. In other words, the WealthRYTS Fellowship prepares youth workers and their organizations to build their capacity to deliver financial mentoring, and, at scale, has the potential to close this gap, supporting young adults to build strong financial foundations and real economic power.
HOW THIS FELLOWSHIP WORKS
WealthRYTS supports fellows as they earn their Money Management Essentials certification through the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education (AFCPE), a nationally recognized organization that sets the standards for financial counseling, coaching, and education. Through the fellowship, MyPath provides space for a supportive learning community among fellows, translation of the content for use with young adults, one-on-one support and comprehensive training on supporting young adult financial goal-setting and action planning, credit building, saving, debt management, and establishing the foundations for wealth-building.
Strengthen Your Impact. Expand Your Credentials.
- Money Management Essentials Certification
- MyPath’s Youth Financial Mentoring Framework & Approach to Impact Measurement
- Learning community among other fellows
- One-on-one support from MyPath
- Exposure to other financial experts with lived experience
- Advanced training in financial coaching and workshop facilitation
- Tailored guidance for fellows’ organizations on implementing youth financial capability programming using MyPath’s Financial Capability Toolkit
- Support integrating financial coaching and mentoring into existing youth program
- Hands-on field experience
- Completion Stipend
The fellowship combines two powerful and complementary sources to provide a unique applied approach to becoming a young adult Financial Capability Trainer and Mentor. Fellows complete the Money Management Essentials certification through the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education (AFCPE), the national standard-setting organization for financial counseling and education. Fellows and their organizations also receive important training in MyPath’s framework for youth financial capability, critical to applying the certification concepts within the reality of young people’s lives. MyPath’s financial capability models center youth development and healing and have demonstrated impact on youth financial capability outcomes. In addition to fellows’ professional development, MyPath works alongside participating organizations to embed financial capability into their youth programs using our Financial Capability Toolkit, ensuring fellows can immediately apply their new skills within their organizations and expand sustainable financial capability supports for the young adults they serve.
