By Franki Ikeman, The Tribune
For James Zarb, it’s about becoming self-sufficient.
The 19-year-old Welland man is employed full-time, has the training to do the work he loves, and has built a savings plan to reach his goals of eventually being able to have a car and a home of his own.
It’s a big step from where he was last year.
“I was trying to be self-sufficient on my own, but it wasn’t really working,” Zarb said.
He said after living on his own and not being able to sustain himself he moved back in with his father and got into an Ontario Works program. That program led him to David Young, program coordinator at Niagara Peninsula Homes and Team ENERGI (Enterprise Niagara for Employment Resources and ‘Green’ Initiatives).
“He helped me to get here, to SNIPS and I started with SNIPS and it’s changing everything,” Zarb said.
Zarb holds a full-time position at SNIPS Landscape and Nursery, where he helps to build and maintain green roofs.
The NPH program takes in 24 youths per year, split into two six month sessions, between the ages of 17 and 30 who are identified as at risk. Through Team ENERGI, participants are given training in the skilled trades and construction, six months of paid work and work experience and assistance finding employment.
Young said the one thing the program had been missing was support and teaching in financial literacy.
“One of the biggest barriers I have found in all of my years working with youth is simply lack of confidence or hesitancy to approaching a financial institution at all,” Young said.
NPH partnered with PenFinancial Credit Union to bring in financial literacy workshops and a new Independent Development Account (IDA) program.
The IDA program was offered to four Team ENERGI participants, who applied and were chosen for the opportunity.
The program matches the participants savings at a 3:1 ratio, to help them reach a particular savings goal. The participants are able to save a maximum of $250 over the six months, which brought each of their total savings to $1,000.
“We did three financial literacy workshops and then once the IDA participants were chosen, it was actually up to them to get in contact with me to figure out a time for us to sit down together and basically talk,” said Adam Rempel, financial services specialist from PenFinancial who worked with the four IDA participants one-on-one.
Rempel said the first step was figuring out what their immediate financial goals were. For a lot of them, being trained in the trades fields, it was as simple as saving the money to be able to buy tools. Later, it was saving the money to buy a car to be able to get to their work sites.
“A lot of it was just kind of sitting down with them and listening to them and guiding them along the way,” Rempel said.
“It’s about the fundamentals, so whether you’re saving for a car or you’re saving for your first home or whether you’re saving for possibly investments in the future, it’s the same fundamentals that are across the board so they can use the knowledge that they gained here for the rest of their lives,” said Josh Juhlke, marketing and communications specialist at PenFinancial.
Zarb, the youngest participant in the IDA program, not only saved the maximum amount for the matching program, but was also able to put away extra funds on top of that, Juhlke said.
For Zarb, Team ENERGI and PenFinancial gave him the opportunity to plan for his future.
“I really want to do construction and build stuff because I like to see what I accomplished after,” he said.
“It showed me who I am and what I’m supposed to do.”
franki.ikeman@sunmedia.ca