Berryessa Flea Market (2024-2025)

Flex Finance Academy’s financial literacy program is a student-led initiative designed to provide accessible financial education by increasing learning opportunities to gain money management skills. We believe that application is the best form of retention, thus our team organized a community project where students can integrate taught knowledge in an impactful way. 

Project Managers decided to use a Project-Based Learning teaching style, in which students gain knowledge through working together to solve real-world problems. Thus, in the community project, students helped low-income business owners come up with a better way to manage finances. Students were divided into groups, each group assisting a different individual with their financial needs. Each vendor represented a small project, a real life financial challenge that students tackled through online interviews with these individuals, as well as collaboration with their team. Flex Finance Academy believes that application is the best way to ensure retention of knowledge. Thus, the project would ensure that students applied their knowledge in real-world scenarios, reinforcing key financial concepts through real-world experience. Furthermore, the community project will advance the impact of Flex Finance Academy, increasing the scope of financial education received.

The Berryessa Flea Market was chosen as the target for this initiative due to the fact that many vendors within the flea market had lower incomes and faced higher financial risks. This was because flea markets are notorious for cheap, bargained prices, leading to an unstable source of  income. To make things worse, they often lacked formal financial education and were unsure of how to manage their money. Furthermore, the Berryessa Flea Market would close for good in 2026, which would lead to many vendors losing their main source of income.

Our team were able to reach 6 vendors who were interested in the program. This was due to the fact that majority of the market consisted of immigrant families with little fluency in English. Furthermore, many were unfamiliar with technology such as Google Meets, which caused them to back out. In the future, Flex Finance aims to change this by hosting in-person sessions, and offering possible translators to sustain the project.

Project Managers decided to start small in order to prioritize the quality of the program. This approach would allow each student group to provide more focused, in-depth support to each vendor’s needs. At the beginning of the program, Project Managers surveyed the vendors on their current financial education level, and problems that they are currently facing in business.

Students were split into groups of six, with each group targeting a different vendor. The goal of this project was to not only create a plan that would assist these business owners’ needs, but would also educate them on basic financial concepts so that they have better skills  to run the business  in the future.

Students were able to gain further insights on the vendors' financial conditions through online interview sessions hosted by our team. Not only did students get to know these vendors better, but it also allowed for them to determine areas of major struggle. For instance, some vendors struggled more on savings and debt, while others did not know how to invest (all of which were covered in our lesson plans).

At the end of the program, students used data collected from vendor interviews and communication to come up with a final presentation, answering all vendor needs. The final presentations were graded in person, with vendors and Project Managers present for questions and feedback. Thanks to a temporary partnership with Ivymax Foundation, Project Managers were able to hold the presentations in a free classroom, allowing for a more interactive presentation. 

After the final presentation, we sent out a final survey to vendors on their experience. Almost all believed that the project was beneficial to them, and many were able to learn something new. For instance, one of our vendors did not know how to save efficiently, and students helped her come up with a saving strategy (50 30 20 budgeting rule). Additionally, for vendors that were in debt, students were able to recall the Snowball Method from our lessons, targeting the smallest debt first. Students were able to come up with a feasible plan and timeline for targeting each debt.

Concluding the program, we sent out an optional survey to students on possible feedback. The responses were generally positive, with only some stating that the lessons were a bit too fast, and needing more time to digest the information. Flex Finance plans to use all student feedback to improve our program, refining the quality of our education.