Are you looking for Financial Empowerment?

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More and more people in the Netherlands are struggling to make ends meet financially, and many are living in debt. Churches are often very active in helping people improve their lives, both spiritually and socio-economically. People often knock on the church's door, which then gives, for example, a food package.

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This project aims to inform people in financial stress about the help they are entitled to. Indeed, help is available - the national government has recently developed a number of new options to combat rising poverty. But it turns out that 30% of people who are entitled to it do not use it. Sometimes because they do not know they are entitled to it, or do not know how to find the way.

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In this project, church workers receive a short training to become "Financial Ambassadors". They will be further equipped and empowered to educate people in and around their churches and community about what their rights for help are. SKIN believes this will strengthen the social impact of churches by giving church workers more knowledge about available aid.

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The primary goal of this project is to bridge the gap between people with financial stress and available assistance programs. Anonymity is guaranteed, personal data that would make people traceable will not be collected. People who ask the church for help out of trust should be able to count on this.  

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Would you like to become a Financial Ambassador for your church or community?

This would mean the following:

• You will receive a short (and free) training of two half-days, during which you will learn to use a quick scan and get information about available help from government and non-governmental organizations. We also discuss how to engage with people who may be ashamed of their problems or lack confidence in getting help, and how we can encourage and empower them to improve their life situation. 

• Then, together with you, we look at how you can and want to help people with financial worries. Think, for example, of sharing information with other people in your church community, or very concretely going through the quick scan together with people and then helping them as best you can. This sharing of information can be done at group activities (for example, after a church service, at a women's night, or any other creative idea you can think of) or in one-on-one conversations. After taking the quick scan, should people discover that they are entitled to more help than they knew, you can give them further information about how to access that help. If necessary, you can go with them (for example, to help translate).

• The amount of time you can put into this project is up to you. We hope that each volunteer can inform about 50 people in total. More is of course always fine! The more people can be helped the better. 

• A modest fee is available for Financial Ambassadors.

• Regularly, we organise public SKIN Café's where we discuss different topics, so we can learn and keep on developing ourselves further!  On March 20th 2025, we are for example organising a SKIN Café in Amsterdam:​

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