Launched in 2006, the Financial Education Institute (FEI)/Individual Development Accounts Program (IDA) for youth and young adults ages 8-30. The FEI/IDA is an extension of Ifetayo's Rites of Passage Programs which support young people of African descent based in Flatbush, Brooklyn serving borough wide and surrounding communities in their passage from adolescence to adulthood.

The Rites of Passage after-school programs provide an educational structure and a nurturing community which build participants’ intellectual and emotional skills, and prepare them to grow into independent, compassionate, self-confident men and women.

The creation of the Financial Education Institute (FEI)/Individual Development Accounts Program (IDA) allows the first full integration of financial education training into the Rites programming, and addresses a glaring need for knowledge and support in a community where most participants are living below the poverty level, earn low incomes, and have no accumulated wealth through asset development. Using the culturally relevant curriculum from Building Native Communities: Financial Skills for Families, a financial literacy model created by the Fannie Mae Foundation and First Nations Development Institute specifically for Native American families, our financial education programming will integrate the ways that people in African cultures traditionally look at savings and sharing, the way Mbongi (a circle healing process used predominantly in the Congo for community healing) leads to community development, and the way the Individual Development Account is a contemporary extension of a traditional notion of pooled savings.

The Institute is offered at levels appropriate to each group. For Rites alumni (including those who are about to attend college, are already attending college or have dropped out of college and plan on returning), the curriculum will provide basic financial literacy training including improved saving, credit clean up, credit creation, and financial management. Additional coaching will focus specifically on the individual situation of each alumnus (newly entering, already attending, or returning to college). These classes will occur as a part of 6-week intensives. For current Rites participants, the main focus of the curriculum will be college preparation, specifically around all financial matters pertaining to college admissions and funding (e.g. application fees, standardized test fees, scholarships, college loans and government grants). For parents and family members of participants the focus of the course will be the concept of saving toward financial independence with special emphasis on budgeting, credit creation and clean up as well as investment opportunities and how to prepare and create wealth within their family unit.

Classes will be taught by volunteers with professional expertise in finance and the Rites faculty members. Faculty members will include Nia Rock, Board Member and Vice President and Community Reinvestment Officer at Sovereign/Satander Bank (formally known as Independence Community Bank); Naima Oyo, Board Chair and Regional CRA Officer at M&T Bank; and Anthony Shropshire, Advisory Board Member and Financial Advisor at Merril Lynch. College and Career Coaching is provided by Ifetayo graduate, Jahde Huntley (’06) who is currently a college counselor at City College.

All Pre-Rites and Rites Participants, and Rites Graduates participate in Individual Development Accounts (IDA) Program in which they save money on a monthly basis towards the pursuit of a college education.

Their savings are matched 2:1.