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2010

We began these blogs because we wanted to start a conversation. The posts on this blog are the personal perspectives of individual staff, volunteers and guest bloggers, they do not necessarily reflect the views of the organization. We encourage response and conversation. We just ask you to keep it respectful. We'd love to hear it. It's a conversation, after all, we hope you'll add to it. Want to be a guest blogger? Email us

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Guest Blogger
Guest Blogger
Fri, 04/30/2010

Keeping Kids in School

The following post was written by Guest Blogger Mazy Yap, a student at Boston University.

As I went online to cruise through my high school website reminiscing my youth, I discovered that each of the past graduating classes had a graduating rate of 99%. This means that in the past 10 years, only 10 of the approximately 1,000 total graduates have dropped out. Growing up in an international school environment that maintains such a low dropout rate, I was surprised by the relatively low graduation rate in Massachusetts last year. The 2009 report released by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education indicates that only 81.5% of the 77,038 enrolled students in Massachusetts graduated last year. If my math didn't fail me, this means that roughly 14,252 students dropped out from school in 2009.  read more »

Guest Blogger
Guest Blogger
Wed, 03/24/2010

Avoiding check cashing, payday loans and other high-cost services

A guide by the Boston Alliance for Economic Inclusion

United Way joins with the FDIC and other financial institutions and community-based, not-for-profit organizations as part of the Boston Alliance for Economic Inclusion. BAEI developed a guide to respond to a growing reality - clients losing sleep over money problems. The guide, called "Understanding High-Cost Financial Services Providers and Mainstream Banking Alternatives,” is a 24 page quick reference guide that describes several of the most common high-cost financial products and the ways each of them can adversely impact people. Through the following post, written by guest blogger Joanne Evans of the Winthrop Federal Credit Union, we are hoping to make it more widely available.  read more »

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