Featured Initiative: Moving Families Forward Option 2

Moving Families Forward (MFF) exemplifies how innovative, whole-family programming can create economic stability. BangorHousing offers adults opportunities to explore employment pathways and build connections into meaningful careers. Meanwhile, the Boys and Girls Club of Bangor engages their children, and while the adults work, children prepare to become the next generation of learners and earners.

When Kyra Cannon moved into Bangor Housing’s Capehart neighborhood in 2021, she’d reached an impasse.

Without consistent care for her kids – then ages one, five, and nine – working a full-time job or going back to school was out of the question for the single mom. But without an income, she had no way of affording childcare or meeting her family’s most basic needs.

That all changed when Cannon signed up for Moving Families Forward, a partnership between Bangor Housing and the Boys & Girls Club of Bangor. With funding from the John T. Gorman Foundation, the program uses a two-generation approach to work with parents and their kids simultaneously – helping parents access the education and job opportunities they need to gain stability and work toward financial independence; providing kids with the care, education, and social opportunities they need to thrive; and offering a suite of support services for the entire family along the way.

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Program Snapshot

Strategies

Moving Families Forward employs a range of strategies that touch on improve all five components of family well-being — education, social capital, wealth & assets, employment, and physical and mental health.

These strategies include:

Access to high-school equivalency support and community college programming;
Classes, playgroups, and events that give families the opportunity to build relationships with others in the community, providing an important network of support;
An enhanced Family Self Sufficiency Program, which allows residents to build savings through escrow accounts, matched savings accounts, financial education, and one-on-one coaching.
The MOMS Partnership, a national model for strengthening family well-being and economic mobility by focusing on maternal mental health.
Community partnerships that give residents direct access to job training, career opportunities, and entrepreneurial guidance; and
For children and youth, an onsite Boys & Girls Club offers a range of programming that includes out-of-school learning opportunities, financial literacy workshops, health and fitness education, and career exploration.

Strategy Results

Strategy Spotlight: Family Self Sufficiency Program

At the core of MFF is the Family Self Sufficiency (FSS) Program. FSS empowers families in public housing by providing tools and resources for economic independence. Families receive personalized coaching, skill-building workshops, and access to supportive services, enhanced through MFF. When families earn more, their rent increases too, but a portion is held in an FSS escrow account to be used for asset building (e.g., home ownership) after program graduation. (The data below was updated in June 2024.)