INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT ACCOUNT (IDA)

The Individual Development Account (IDA) Program is designed to promote and encourage asset building through financial literacy education and discipline monthly savings. Asset building is an anti-poverty strategy that helps low-income individuals and families move toward greater self-sufficiency by accumulating savings and purchasing long-term assets. The theory behind this approach is that by helping individuals and families purchase an asset, as opposed to simply increasing their income, provides stability that may allow them to escape the cycle of poverty permanently. Examples of long-term assets include a home, higher education and training, and/or starting a small business.

The key to the success of The IDA Program is the economic education that participants receive along with monthly and quarterly follow up. The IDA Program curriculum incorporates teaching budgeting skills, reducing expenditures, repairing credit, applying for the Earned Income Tax Credit, avoiding predatory lenders, and accessing financial services. The IDA Program helps participants purchase their desired asset through the achievement of savings goal and completion of required educational course work which ultimately allows them to become a part of the mainstream economic system.