City wins $10,000 grant to help fund financial literacy for immigrants

Lexington’s Office of Multicultural Affairs accepted a $10,000 grant Thursday from the U.S. Conference of Mayors to expand financial literacy classes for immigrants and refugees.

GLOBAL LEX, as they city agency is known, serves Lexington’s visitors, immigrants, refugees and others who are learning English as a second language.

“Financial literacy is an important part of building quality life in our city,” said Mayor Jim Gray. “This grant will support multilingual classes to help people who are new to our city and our country.”

The Conference of Mayors awards two DollarWise Innovation Grants each year to cities that are expanding or enhancing their financial literacy efforts, according to its website.

“The DollarWise award is already helping us to meet an important financial security need for our newcomers,” said Isabel Taylor, Lexington’s multicultural affairs coordinator. “With some 153 foreign languages present in approximately 18 percent of Lexington citizens and newcomers, we were able to initiate financial literacy sessions in French, Swahili, Nepali and other languages and have more planned for this summer.”

The Conference is a non-partisan organization that represents cities across the country with populations of 30,000 or more.

This story was originally published May 25, 2017 at 3:44 PM with the headline "City wins $10,000 grant to help fund financial literacy for immigrants."