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By Liz Freeman

liz.freeman@naplesnews.com

239-263-4778

Low-income women in Southwest Florida who want to improve their lives and go to college have three new friends to help them.

The Women's Foundation of Southwest Florida has joined forces with Florida Community Bank and the United Way of Collier County to launch a new program, Becoming Economically Successful Together, to empower women to reach their educational goals.

The three entities recently received a federal grant of $100,000 from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

"We have been working on it for several years," said Brenda Tate, president of the women's foundation.

Local candidates who meet qualifications and are accepted in the program will learn about saving money and start putting aside income in an insured bank account with a goal. Once a program participant reaches her saving goal, every dollar saved will be matched. The matching dollars will be sent directly to pay for education or training at the qualified institution of her choice.

Tate doesn't have an official launch date yet; those details are being worked on now but the plan is to work with Hodges University to identify potential candidates.

That's because Hodges serves a predominantly female population, many of whom are employed and have educational goals.

This is the first time Southwest Florida will have a program of this nature for low-income women, Tate said.

In the five-county area of Collier, Lee, Charlotte, Hendry and Glades counties, more women live in poverty and are more likely to be Hispanic, Latino, American Indian or a combination of racial backgrounds, according to the women's foundation. Many have less than a high school education and are raising children.

Armed with these study findings several years ago, Tate said she began looking around for what opportunities there are for women to help reach their educational goals and realized there wasn't anything.

That's when the three groups decided to compete for federal funding under the Assets for Independence Program. In Florida, programs in Tampa and in Rivera Beach also were awarded funding this year. All told, 30 programs nationwide were awarded a total of $7.1 million in 2016.

"Florida ranks in the bottom third nationally among women 25 years and older holding at least a bachelor's degree," Nancy Merolla, vice president of Florida Community Bank and chairwoman of the women's foundation board of directors, said.

The $100,000 in federal funding will be matched by $100,000 from donations and corporate underwriters for a pilot launch.

The expectation is 100 women will be identified and the hope is to enroll 75 of them, she said. From there, the group projects 25 will open the savings account and at least 23 of them will reach their savings goal, Tate said.

Once the program gets off the ground and kinks are worked out, the next step would be to expand to serve more women.

"We should absolutely be able to raise the matching funds to compete for a much larger grant," Tate said.

For more information visit the foundation's website at www.fundwomenfl.org.