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YWCA conference improves
young women’s financial literacy

By Aqueila M. Lewis

Over 300 young women attended YWCA Berkeley/Oakland’s Young Women and Money Conference at the Oakland Marriott City Center on Saturday. Attendees learned the tools to gain financial independence and success, including the street smarts of money: maintaining good credit, balancing your checkbook, paying bills on time and more.

   “This is our first Young Women and Money Conference for young women ages 18-30,” said Sharon Bettinelli, YWCA Berkeley/Oakland executive director. “It continues our three goals which guide all our work: elimination of racism, economic empowerment of women and development of leaders. Many women don’t know how to do their finances, budget and save; there’s a disparity in our society.”
    The conference included workshops, prizes, tote bags filled with financial books and literature, and resource tables staffed by event sponsors. Corporate sponsor HSBC-North America provided a $75,000 grant for YWCA’s programs.
    “There’s so much that our mothers didn’t tell us. What I did learn I learned through vision,” said keynote speaker Lateefah Simon. Simon talked about her experiences as a struggling teenage mother who lived check to check and developed bad credit but at the age of 19 became executive director of the Center for Young Women’s Development in San Francisco.
   “When I was given the opportunity to lead, I learned how to make a way out of no way,” said Simon. “The center was an institution where young women could gain self-determination and say, ‘My path will be different and I can create a way out of no way.’”
    Simon encouraged attendees to create opportunities that their mothers could only pray for and to have a supportive community. “Young women and girls all throughout the world rely on us. We have to get it right now. We hold the world on our shoulders. Our challenge is to figure out our path and turn our pain and struggles into power,” she said.
    For more information, contact YWCA Berkeley/Oakland at (510) 848-6370 or visit www.ywca-berkeley.org.