Challenges: attracting teens to library programming during COVID; encouraging community collaboration; keeping teens engaged in a virtual space; coordinating workshops with mentors, organizations, teens, and families.

Opportunities: a positive behavioral and social transformation for at-risk teens; presenting impactful library workshops for teens in the community; new opportunities for library collaboration; encouraging participating teens to create artwork, poetry, films and learn about financial literacy.

In this year-long program, teens from foster care and juvenile programs are offered the opportunity to learn important new skills through participation in financial literacy workshops, book clubs, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Mathematics) and film workshops. These workshops are, in turn, presented by professionals and mentors from those respective fields; that is bankers, librarians, scientists and filmmakers. These professionals infuse their workshops with their talent and passion for their field.

This year FMYI successfully delivered 60 holistic workshops focused on developing teen self-efficacy. Over 120 youth attended financial literacy workshops on such topics as managing a bank account, building credit, debt management, identity theft, banking and investing. Additionally, the teens learned about songwriting, publishing, and copyright in the music entertainment industry. They also attended 12 workshops featuring NASA scientists, 20 responsive librarianship/book clubs and 12 teen filmmaking workshops.