MPA Program at CCNY and Kasiani Nesturi
Kasiani Nesturi (MPA ‘22) is a financial professional who has worked as a senior analyst at several global financial services companies over the past eight years. An immigrant from Albania, Nesturi is keenly aware of the economic disempowerment of women in her native country and in the Balkan region more broadly. That is what motivated her to apply for the MPA Changemaker Fellowship and create Learn Financial Management Café (LFMC), a seven-week financial literacy program designed for communities of low-income Balkan women living in New York City. In LFMC’s pilot phase this spring, participants showed demonstrable gains in confidence and knowledge of basic financial management concepts. Nesturi plans to scale the project by creating a mobile application and incorporating career development opportunities. She discusses the project further in this interview.
What is the primary goal of your project?
I created the Learn Financial Management Café to teach financial literacy to communities of low-income Balkan women in NYC.
These communities face high poverty rates due to lack of women’s access to education, forced or arranged marriages, sexism, and cultural neglect of women’s empowerment. Building financial security to move up the economic ladder has been a struggle. The women are an underclass, by which I mean a social group that suffers from chronic poverty and has no accumulation of wealth to transmit to the next generation - or even to make daily ends meet.
Through structured lessons, LFMC teaches women about personal budgeting, goal-setting, saving, and understanding investment products, debt, and other critical financial concepts. Our goal is to increase women’s confidence, reduce their stress and anxiety around finances, and ultimately to stop the cycle of intergenerational poverty.
The most heartwarming part of the project was when a few women came forward and said: “I will no longer depend on men to be financially literate.”
What motivated you to work on this project?
This program is near and dear to my heart because it touches a part of my identity and cultural background. As a female from an underdeveloped country, Albania, I feel privileged to pursue my dreams and make a life of my own in the United States.
Moving to Albania as a child was the first moment when I was exposed to an inefficiently run administration. The country lacked, and for the most part still lacks, organizations that work to protect the rights of women. The structure of the government left no room for public policy reform and improvement. While trying to build a pluralist government, the post-communist leaders were still embracing the old ways of governing where the women had no voice, power, or right of mobilization.
I realized that women not only in Albania but the Balkan region overall are not seen as a leading force in society. The societal norms and expectations leave women no room for growth and empowerment. In most cases, women are pressured to marry early and raise kids while men provide for them. Money is presumed to be a male domain. Women’s right to pursue higher education, build a career, and achieve financial stability are denied.
When I moved to NYC, I interacted with many Balkan women. I saw their wounds from having come from Balkan society. Even though they had migrated to the US, they were still unable to make a life of their own. That is what motivated me to create the Learn Financial Management Café.
What has been the most memorable part of this experience as a Changemaker Fellow?
The participant selection interviews were very memorable. A lot of our conversation focused on convincing women to understand the impact of financial literacy in their lives. We told them how lack of financial knowledge can lead to poor financial decisions that have long-term consequences, and how financial illiteracy causes us to make repeated mistakes and never rise above the challenges. Another memorable part of the project was when two of the participants each week led a group discussion. That helped them learn to research financial concepts and gain confidence speaking in front of others.
How would you like to scale this project to reach more people?
Learn Financial Management Cafe has ambitious growth targets and a scalable model. We hope to partner with colleges, nonprofits, and other institutions that focus on financial inclusion. We hope to digitize the curriculum and deliver the content through a mobile application, and document participants’ progress on a website. We also hope that women who successfully complete the program will become mentors and possibly facilitators of the workshops.
How can people support your work?
I would like to partner with other women-run nonprofits and other institutions to expand the curriculum. I would also like to expose program participants to new opportunities such as volunteering and employment at partner organizations. I would like the participants in our program to be included in events and activities where they can network, learn, and also market themselves and their newly acquired skills.
Kasiani Nesturi created this project with support from the MPA Changemaker Fellowship, a program that supports MPA students who propose a project that will apply the skillsets they are learning in the program to a community issue while advancing their own professional development. Find out more.