Know Your Money (Keep the Change) Evaluation Report

Know Your Money, Keep the Change (KYM) is a project established and supported through the Big Lottery’s Improving Financial Confidence (IFC) Programme. The overarching aim of the IFC programme is defined as helping people “become more confident in, and more aware of, how to take control of their finances” in order to enable them to “choose, access and use financial products and services suitable to their needs”. The 37 projects that were funded were required to target people living in social housing, reflecting their greater exposure to issues of financial exclusion. Within the required focus on social housing residents, KYM chose to target young people aged between 18 and 24.
KYM is a partnership project, led by Erimus Housing (now part of Thirteen Housing Group) and involving other social housing providers. One of the other key partners, centrally involved is Achieving Change Through Enterprising Solutions (Actes), a charity and social enterprise that prides itself on its client-centred focus. Young people themselves are also key partners; extensive engagement before the project began (several hundred young people were consulted at bidding stage) led to a core group that established KYM’s continuing Youth Panel.