Rhea Serna's blog

On Friday, October 2nd, the Mission Asset Fund | Fondo Popular de la Misión hosted a community discussion with SF Supervisor David Campos.

I, along with Jose Quinonez, MAF's Executive Director, informed close to 30 community leaders about the need to promote culturally relevant financial education and push banks to offer responsible and appropriate financial products that reflect Latinas/os actual lives. We presented the findings and recommendations from the Immigrant Financial Integration Initiative study.

Supervisor Campos address the shock that the community is still suffering from the three homicides that recently took place in the Mission. The meeting also focused on possible solutions for reducing violence and implementing a community policing program that would be accountable to the community.

The IME - Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior (The Institute for Mexicans Abroad) regularly hosts Jornadas Informativas (Informative Conferences) with invited community leaders from Mexico, the United States and Canada. On behalf of MAF, I attended the 66th Jornada Informativa on Financial Education from April 21st to April 23rd in Mexico City. The Jornada is structured around an agenda in which participants exchange ideas, projects and programs for Mexican communities abroad.

On Saturday, March 14th the Mission Asset Fund hosted its first Charla sobre Cooperativas (Community Discussion about Cooperatives). The event was held at the Centro del Pueblo and the following cooperatives participated in the Charla:
Mission SF Federal Credit Union, Rainbow Grocery, San Francisco Community Land Trust, TechCollective, Design Action Collective, and TeamWorks
Over 20 community members were in attendance and engaged in a lively discussion about how cooperatives are different from a regular business, private homeownership or a bank. Coop representatives shared about their experiences with regards to the communication challenges of working with a group of people in which everyone has decision making authority. Coop members also addressed the benefits and challenges of coops’ legal, tax and accounting structures.