Center for Financial Empowerment

Founded in 2005, the Center for Financial Empowerment is a nonprofit organization serving high school youth in underserved communities. Partnering with schools and community organizations in Southern Nevada to offer financial education programs, the CFE empowers disadvantaged young people to make better financial choices that improve their quality of life. The CFE provides a unique, big-picture solution for the area's most at-risk youth — they learn actionable economic skills and receive access to free and matched deposit accounts, tools, and loans to implement their learned skills.

The Center for Financial Empowerment (CFE) offers personal finance education for disadvantaged high school students in highly interactive formats to maximize the training's effectiveness and longevity. Knowing that effective education takes time and consistency, the CFE's programs provide a three-pronged approach consisting of the following: 

1) Education — Financial literacy is taught through classroom instruction in a four-year program utilizing an evidence-based financial literacy curriculum as the framework. 

2) Hands-on Practice — Students practice using a budget and managing a household's savings and spending during a timed activity in a simulation-learning event called Mad City Money.

3) Incentivized Engagement — Students are offered access to free and matched deposit accounts to manage their finances in real bank accounts designed to help them save, learn, and build credit wisely. This program is made possible through a unique collaboration with a local credit union.