Abstract
The Prosperity Agenda (TPA) is a nonprofit organization whose human-centered design process centers on the belief that all people are resilient and resourceful. From 2016 to 2019, with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, they collaborated with the Washington State Department of Commerce to design and implement a new program to encourage two-generational savings among families receiving social welfare assistance. Innovative classroom events focused on savings were a direct outgrowth of TPA’s work with families experiencing poverty. The positive results of the yearlong pilot confirmed the idea that an intervention rooted in human-centered design and guided by both the experiential wisdom of low-income families and the deep expertise of event facilitators would help families build financial resilience.
Highlights
Poverty assistance programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) often focus on correcting a perceived lack of discipline among “the poor.” Such programs temporarily relieve acute financial stress but do little to end the root causes of persistent poverty (Soss et al, 2011)
The Prosperity Agenda (TPA) is a nonprofit organization whose humancentered design (HCD) process runs counter to prevailing approaches that are anchored in the assumptions that families in poverty make bad financial decisions, don’t know how to save money, and are responsible for their own fate (Fraser & Gordon, 1994; Jacobson et al, 2009)
Kellogg Foundation, TPA collaborated with the Washington State Department of Commerce (Commerce), who manage TANF programs, to develop and implement a new program to encourage twogenerational savings among families receiving social welfare assistance
Summary
Poverty assistance programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) often focus on correcting a perceived lack of discipline among “the poor.” Such programs temporarily relieve acute financial stress but do little to end the root causes of persistent poverty (Soss et al, 2011). Success for this initiative was guided by one key question: How might we use a two-generation approach to improve financial resilience and to strengthen savings behaviors of parents in social welfare programs?
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