Our partnerships with Indigenous communities begin with listening.
Through conversations with community partners and members, we heard a need for Indigenous-focused financial literacy resources that honour diverse perspectives on wealth, acknowledge systemic barriers, and celebrate Indigenous resilience.
Together with Indigenous partners, we developed Wealth Mindset: Indigenous Financial Resilience workshops to ensure the content is culturally relevant and taught from an Indigenous perspective. The workshops aim to increase financial confidence by teaching basic banking and budgeting skills.
Wealth Mindset is one way Vancity is advancing its commitment to Reconciliation. The financial resilience workshops were developed in partnership with Elders, Indigenous colleagues, and the Called to Action Collaborative to ensure the content reflects Indigenous perspectives, experiences, and ways of knowing.
“Wealth Mindset is unique because it connects participants to their history and their cultural values,” adds Michelle Laviolette, Director of Indigenous Banking Strategy. “When we innovate and deliver programs through an Indigenous lens, the impact reaches far beyond the workshop itself.”
Free to attend and taught virtually or in person, Wealth Mindset offers four main workshop topics, or modules: Circle, Banking Basics, Basic Budgeting, and a new Debt Smart module - which focuses on effective debt management.
Unique to the curriculum is the Circle Module. The module is foundational and delves into important topics, such as the First Peoples’ concepts of wealth and economy, multi-generational impacts of colonialism, as well as Indigenous economic resurgence.
Having Indigenous facilitators and an Elder at each workshop is crucial in creating a safe space to connect with the participants, to meet them where they are at, and to start their journey.
“As facilitators, it is our stories, our truths and our storytelling that is key in delivering these workshops,” explains Jen Turner, Community Investment Associate. “During the Circle Module, we decolonize and define our own meaning of ‘wealth’. Indigenous Peoples are rich with our culture and traditions, with our families and values, and with our connection to Mother Earth.”
Vancity has partnered with Stó:lo Nation and Metis Nation BC to deliver the Wealth Mindset financial workshops by trained facilitators. In the same way Vancity developed Each One, Teach One, Wealth Mindset is designed so facilitator training can be extended to community partner organizations.
“I’ve seen the impact that Wealth Mindset has had on our facilitators, Elders and participants. It is poignant and empowering. The feedback we have received is very moving,” says Michelle.
At the heart of the program is an understanding that values, teachings, and relationships are passed from one generation to the next. The workshops encourage participants to explore their personal values and draw on them as a guide for financial decision-making, helping foster a healthier and more confident relationship with money and finances.
Christie Sparklingeyes, Indigenous Recruiter, experienced firsthand that Wealth Mindset isn’t just a financial literacy course.
“It was very emotional,” she says.
As she explored her values and what wealth means to her, Christie reflected on her earliest memories of money and began to move past some of the negative feelings they carried. Now a trained facilitator, she hopes to help others experience the same transformation.
"If we can share these teachings with 10, 100 or 1,000 more people, imagine the ripple effect we can create," she says. "It could be felt for generations."
That ripple effect is exactly what Michelle Laviolette hopes Wealth Mindset will achieve. "The dream is for these teachings to be carried forward by today's participants and shared with future generations."
When your money is changing the world, you are changing the world.
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