DREAM Iowa collaborates with local community partners in order to bring interactive & bilingual financial seminars to towns across Iowa. Locally trusted immigrant professionals from Great Western Bank, Lennox Employee Credit Union, Premier Real Estate, and Transamerica co-facilitated the seminars. The Financial Independence seminars are offered in the language spoken by the immigrant group in order to increase learning ability. The information is presented by immigrants with experiences similar to the community in order to maintain a culturally competent curriculum. We’d like to give a special thanks to La Carreta Mexican Restaurant, La Salud Grocery Store, St. Mary’s Catholic Church, and Villachuato Super Market for sponsoring this series of workshops.  

DREAM Iowa, with the help of Latina volunteers from Latina Leadership Initiative, has organized a six-week Financial Independence seminar in which participants have learned about basic banking services, money management, credit, loans, mortgages, financial planning, and everything in between. The graduation ceremony took place on Thursday, June 24th at St. Mary’s church basement located at 9 W. Linn St, Marshalltown, IA 50158, and was open to the public to celebrate the achievements of local immigrant Iowans.

We would like to thank the Latina Leadership Initiative volunteers Ruby Murillo, Tania Fonseca, and Cristina Munoz De La Torre for helping us lead this successful seminar.

We would also like to highlight some of the seminar students who demonstrated outstanding performance:

• Perfect attendance: Jennifer Arce
• Most improved: Juan Gutierrez
• Best scores: Evelia Gutierrez