When Create Action announced Pockets Change as the winner of a Sony Create Action grant, we were excited to work with them and join with their community to build on what the organization has accomplished. Through hip-hop pedagogy, the Brooklyn-based nonprofit talks and teaches about money as a revolutionary act with the power to transform lives and communities. As recipients of the grant, Pockets Change receives $50,000 in cash to continue and expand the organization's work, $50,000 in Sony Electronics products to support their action plan, and this Sony-produced short film telling their story.
Learn more about Create Action grant winner Pockets Change and their work to address systemic issues of educational equity and the racial wealth divide.
The mission of Pockets Change is to build intergenerational financial resilience with students, families and educators. Their belief is that financial education is about much more than numbers, it’s a means for self-care and social justice. Through hip hop pedagogy, which focuses on understanding self-identity in relation to the whole, their programs occur in classrooms and communities where learners face individual challenges as well as institutional barriers.
“You can’t focus on crushing your goals and making sure that you are focusing in school and going to work, when you don’t have stable housing or you don’t know where your next meal is going to come from,” explains Johanna Ramirez, a director in youth employment services for the Henry Street Settlement. “So I think that having financial security just removes a lot of barriers, and also just the earlier you start learning about your finances and how to take control of them, the better off you are.”
By connecting hip hop and finance, Pockets Change helps others develop an understanding of themselves and their relationship with money. They help build financial habits that resonate with the individual's personal identity while exploring how to communicate, collaborate and advocate for change in our lives and our communities. They believe that talking and teaching about money is a revolutionary act with the power to transform lives and communities.
“Limiting the amount of stress and shame people have around money, increasing the amount of us talking about money, and our empathy toward each other about money,” says Dyalekt, the nonprofit’s director of pedagogy. “Pockets Change is here to make it so that we can breathe, and remember who we are.”
Learn more about Pockets Change at pocketschange.com.
Stay tuned to Alpha Universe for future news and learn more about Create Action and our past grant recipients HERE.
