Credit Union SA launches budget initiative to help homeless young people

A new training initiative designed to help homeless young people better make ends meet has been launched by Credit Union SA in a partnership with St Johns Youth Services.

Credit Union SA CEO, Grant Strawbridge said the program involved training a core group of staff at St Johns in the use of effective budget planning and how to use a specially developed budget book which is then provided to young people to maintain.

“Many of us can at times have trouble juggling a budget, but for a young person who has to survive on a few hundred dollars from week to week and has nowhere permanent to stay, good money management is often the difference between eating or having a roof over their head or not,” Mr Strawbridge said.

“The St Johns Youth Services team provide support to more than 1,000 young people every year, so we decided to develop a program that allows our own finance and budget experts to share their knowledge so that the St Johns Youth Services team can better help young people at a grass-roots level,” he said.

“As a business with a long history in South Australia we wanted to do what we could to help young homeless people to better understand how to budget and potentially save some money so that they can have greater financial certainty.”

St Johns Youth Services CEO Wendy Malycha said the sharing of knowledge by the Credit Union SA team would make a significant difference to the lives of many young people.

“This is a fantastic initiative and offers young people who are going through a tough time in their lives to take control of their finances based on a greater level of understanding about budgets,” Ms Malycha said.

“While many young people are looking at buying a car, take an overseas trip or are saving for some other special purchase, others are trying to live week to week on a very limited amount of money and cannot show any financial history or savings pattern as a result,” she said.

“Our team will work with young people to develop a budget which they can carry with them and track and monitor their spending against a target that they have set - which is very empowering and allows them to better understand their personal cash flows.”

The program involves training of up to 30 St Johns Youth Services staff that will then incorporate this knowledge in their daily interaction with homeless young people.

As South Australia’s third largest credit union, Credit Union SA has a total of seven branches, $800 million in assets and more than 50,000 members.