a. According to the CDC, there are over seven million blind and visually impaired people in the United States who study, work and support families while experiencing a 70 percent unemployment rate. One of the most important remedies for this alarming situation is basic financial literacy and planning, yet we face exclusion from the most fundamental financial literacy programs due to inaccessible web sites, materials and/or lack of knowledge about the financial reality of blind people in the financial education field. Penny Forward is a nonprofit organization, founded and led by blind people.
Together, we empower each other to navigate the complex landscape of personal finance through education, mentoring, and mutual support. We offer a range of learning opportunities including accessible, self-paced online financial education courses, weekly and monthly personal finance workshops, and personalized financial counseling by blind accredited financial counselors. Our regular blog and podcast introduce blind people who are making a difference in the world and provide timely, critical information to blind people everywhere. Our app reduces the friction even more enabling blind people to access critical information no matter where they are. We are demonstrating that we, as blind people, can take charge of our financial lives and together, we can move the blind community from being recipients of services to being contributors to our society by enabling economic mobility, and assisting people to focus on long-term growth instead of short-term survival. Every individual we mentor contributes to positive, collective, community change. Each day we move closer to erasing the long-standing unemployment rate and financial marginalization among blind people forever.

What our grantee is saying: "It’s been so wonderful to see first-hand the impact we’ve been able to make on the financial confidence of the people we’ve served so far. As a young and growing organization, we know there is so much more we must do, though. This funding from the Awesome Foundation will amplify our impact making it possible to change even more lives. Thank you, Awesome Foundation, for this generous gift."