Community Resource Spotlight: Whatcom Literacy Council with Katherine Freimund
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Matt: Welcome to Bellingham Technical College’s Money$marts Podcast. I’m your host, Matt Benoit. And each episode we’ll talk to BTC students, staff community professionals and financial experts about financial literacy and wellness in order to help listeners navigate resources in the community and empower themselves financially. This episode we are going to spotlight the Whatcom Literacy Council, a nonprofit which provides education services for ABE students, ABE standing for Adult Basic Education, as well as ESL students that standing for English as a Second Language. We’re here today with Katherine Freimund. You’re with the Whatcom Literacy Council…
Katherine: Yes, I am the Executive Director of the Whatcom Literacy Council.
Matt: We’re going to talk a little bit about your role there. How did you start working there?
Katherine: Well, I’m an executive in the nonprofit community and so I had worked at other nonprofits before that and now I run the show at the Whatcom Literacy Council. So we offer adults basic services. They come to us and say “I’d like to strengthen my literacy skills.” So they would, want to read or write or speak better, math, computer skills, things like that. If people are learning English as a Second Language that is considered part of the adult basic skills field at this point in time. We train volunteers and provide one-on-one tutoring and small group classes for adults. We do not work with the k-12. And, then, we also place volunteers in classrooms here at BTC and then also throughout Whatcom Community college at the request of the instructor. Mostly in their Transition Ed. departments. So, if they have a class, perhaps with very diverse amount of levels of skill, they might ask us for a couple trained volunteers to serve in their classrooms so that their students can be more successful. So that’s what we do. We are considered a literacy organization but not primarily a financial literacy organization but most of the people we work with are probably below high school diploma level. And, as a result often are low income because their literacy levels do not allow them to get a better paying job. As a result, most of the people we work with probably need to strengthen their financial literacy skills as well as their literacy skills.
Matt: What is the importance of this work, especially to Whatcom County primarily. But you just kind of answered that in terms of, if people have a cultural or language barrier, that’s preventing them from getting a certain job or certain position or certain advancement then you know that’s obviously impacting their ability to make a good living so.
Katherine: It’s more than that too. Literacy is being able to engage with your neighbors. If you want to be informed about what’s going on in your community at any level whether that’s political or social. If you want to interact with your children’s school, for example, you know. You can’t have a conversation with their teacher, you can’t read the notes that they’re sending home, and it creates some huge barriers for really supporting your child’s success. Often, this being the United States of America, having a good job allows you to take better care of your family. It puts you in the driver’s seat, you become the person who in control of your own destiny. And so we feel that when we work with people and strengthen their literacy skills it allows them to be more self-sufficient 
Matt: Right, and obviously, literacy – a basic definition of it is, you know, we would probably just say, the ability to be able to read and write but beyond that, what would be your definition or what Whatcom Literacy Council definition of what literacy means?
Katherine: How about I take it up a notch and give you the UN definition. 
Matt: Okay!
Katherine: The ability to identity, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute using printed and written materials associated with varying concepts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals to develop their knowledge and potential, to participate in their community and wider society. So, basically communicating.
Matt: Right
Katherine: In a real fundamental sense.
Matt: On a similar level, now how would you define financial literacy? 
Katherine: Well, my understanding is that financial literacy is that the person understands the fundamental facts about how money works. A common sense understanding that allows you to make good decisions about your financial resources. What can you do with your money? That includes budgets, understanding what credit cards do, checks, banking, savings, things like that. So, it does involve certain types of vocabulary skillset. But it really is overall a fundamental understanding. We differentiate that from financial capability, where that’s – the willingness and confidence to act and use those skills. So you can be taught financial literacy skills. So you can be taught financial literacy skills but then to move into the realm where you have the ability to use those skills in your everyday life, we would say is moving towards financial capability. And that’s really what we strive for.
Matt: So, you talk about the ESL and ABE lessons that the Literacy Council provides, does financial literacy ever overlap in those lessons and how so? 
Katherine: It does. When people come to us and ask for our help, they typically don’t say “you’re a financial literacy organization and that’s why I’m coming to you.” They would typically go to the Opportunity Council for example to ask for those, for help with those skills but inherently if you think about the level our learners are operating at, we’re making the assumption that they don’t have strong financial literacy skills. So what we try to do is we make sure that my professional staff and then the volunteers that we train to do our tutoring and small group classes are very familiar with financial literacy as a concept and then resources in the community, the vocabulary that you would need, worksheets, books, things like that that might help you if this comes up as a topic. It probably won’t be what they identify as the goal that they’re working on but it might become part of that conversation. We want people to be well versed in tools so that when that does come up they’re able to tackle it.
Matt: Are the ESL and ABE classes imbedding any of these financial literacy ideas into their curriculum?
Katherine: I think that some of the good teachers have always been doing that because they recognize that that’s something that students can easily wrap their heads around, this is an application, this is what we’re doing. So it’s a very easy tool to use. Overall, across the board, kindergarten through k-12 and then on to community college and college level the, I think the approach is trending towards embedding financial literacy skills and tools into everything we do and not have it be a stand alone, separate class. Moving away from the financial literacy class, ok did that, check that off and then suddenly you’re now financially literate. It’s more that recognizing that we live in a capitalist society and we need these tools all the way along and we can start teaching them at a very young age and continue to do that all the way through college knowing that at different points in time, people will have different context and different ways of applying what they’re learning so, I think that’s definitely the trend in education today. We should see a lot more of that in the future.
Matt: When we talk about some of the barriers that ESL and ABE students might face when navigating their finances, such as, you know, even how to interact with a banking institution, you know, if there’s a language barrier, maybe that they might not trust a financial institution because of that cultural differences. I guess talk a little bit about some of those barriers that you think they encounter. 
Katherine: I think you’re hitting it right on the head there. There’s a lot of perceptions, a lot of, I’m making a vast generalization here, I would say there’s a fairly low level of trust in banking institutions, especially when people have low levels of literacy. If you are not good at math, and you can’t read well or you English is not very good to even verbally communicate. How do you give all your money to a banking institution and then track what’s happening to that. You can just imagine the challenges there. And so, whether or not a banking institution is sensitive to the needs of people who have those challenges, providing a teller who speaks Spanish fluently or something like that – that might be the case. They might say “Oh, we have our Spanish speaking teller out in Ferndale, you can go out there if you want to do your banking.” It’s a challenge and I think even just sort of at a very personal level, you know, giving your money to another organization to watch – I think people are really careful about that. I think there’s a lot of horror stories about being charged fees whether they’re deserved or not. And even if banks have programs where they set it up that you would never get any fees if you’re at a certain level of an account. People don’t know about those stories. 
Matt: Do you have students that are explicitly interested in learning about finances when they’re in these classes? 
Katherine: I would say it’s rare for that to be the reason someone came to the Literacy Council. When we work with a learner we have them identify their goal or goals. And try to help them reach those goals working at their level and with their schedule. So if you were being tutored we would create a learning plan based on those goals. It would be very rare for a person to say “I want to set up a bank account” for example.  And yet, you know maybe they’re working on a certificate that leads them to a better job and when they get a better job, now maybe they have the opportunity to save some money, or something like that an so that these things are sort of like part of the whole picture. That’s not the one thing you came and asked for help with but it would be part of becoming more self-sufficient as your situation improves. 
Matt: When the students you work with are seeking specific skills outside of basic literacy, where can you point them to?
Katherine: There’s all kinds of stuff going on. The Whatcom Literacy Council is a member of the Whatcom Asset Building Coalition and that’s a member based group of organizations that’s facilitated through the Opportunity Council that anybody who has, is doing anything related to financial literacy  can be involved in and so we’re involved with the Whatcom Asset Building Coalition because many of our learners need to be aware of what’s going on and our professional staff need to be aware of what’s going on. There’s nonprofits and churches and other organizations that have financial literacy classes specifically. The opportunity council has a mentoring program for people that, it’s sort of like here at Bellingham Technical college but they aren’t students. There’s actually quite a bit going on in the community. There’s banks and credit unions that have specific programs for people who maybe have either bad credit or maybe have never established a bank account before and what’s the difference. We worked on a very good website for the Whatcom asset building coalition that’s both for providers and clients that has everything from a worksheet to start a budgeting project to answering the question of what’s the difference between a credit union and a bank so. And so, my staff try to be very well versed in, sort of, what’s going on in the community if we need to make referrals but we aren’t case-workers so
Matt: Right, right.
Katherine: It’s a fine line.
Matt: Is there anything else you wanted to add that you feel is important for anyone listening to this to know?
Katherine: No, I think this is really good. You know, our business plan is to train volunteers to work with learners and so when, as an organization we’re providing our volunteer teachers with the tools to pass this on. We feel that that helps them strengthen their own skills as well as working with the learners who inherently have these issues. So, it’s a win-win situation.
Matt: If someone is interested in volunteering what should they do? Where can they begin?
Katherine: They could call the Whatcom Literacy Council at 360-752-8678 or they can check our website. We actually have a couple of little videos on the website for people who are interested in tutoring that are sort of like all of the nuts and bolts. All of the basic questions that you might want to find out about our [organization] could be answered by watching these videos and at the end you’ll either say “oh! This is perfect! I’d love to say” or you could say “not for me, I think I should look somewhere else.” And we are always looking for volunteers so…”
Matt: Okay
Katherine: That’s great. Thanks for passing that on. 
Matt: Yeah, and if there’s anyone listening to this who may feel that they need help with English language learning skills or 
Katherine: …basic literacy
Matt: Yeah, basic literacy. Where would - where should they start?
Katherine: Just give us a call. And we’d have them come in for a short interview to find out what they want to work on, what their skill level is, and what their learning style is. And they could say “this is what I want to work on but I’m only available at this time of day” and we would work to find a volunteer that we could match. Could meet them at the time and place that’s convenient for them. And all of our services are free
Matt: Awesome. And where is the Literacy Council office? 
Katherine: We rent a suite of offices here at BTC. We’re in building A and right across the hall from the Transitional Ed Department. So, we are not a part of Bellingham Technical College, we rent those offices but it’s a lovely place to be, it’s right on the bus line and there’s parking!
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Matt: Excellent. Alright, well my thanks to Katherine for being on the program. Thanks for listening to this episode of the BTC Money$marts podcast, be sure to check out all our episodes on the BTC website. They’re loaded with stories, tips, tricks and strategies for financial literacy. This podcast is produced by Cheryl Kennedy with music courtesy of Bensound.com. I’m Matt Benoit, see you next time!