About MESA
The MESA College Initiative is a partnership between CASA of Oregon, and select high schools, colleges and universities across Oregon. The MESA College Initiative was designed to create access to post-secondary education individual development accounts for Oregonians with limited financial resources who have aspirations to pursue a post-secondary course of study.
Partnership objectives are to:
- Increase the number of underrepresented students with limited financial resources enrolling into post-secondary study at select Oregon institutions;
- Increase the number of participating students graduating with the skills to immediately impact the region’s workforce needs;
- Decrease the amount of debt with which a student graduates;
- Encourage, reinforce and model positive financial practices for students.
Every dollar a student saves in MESA is matched 5:1. Students are able to set intermittent goals to draw down from their savings and match once every twelve months, or at the end of their entire savings period. Students must save for a minimum of six months; the maximum savings period is thirty-six months.
Based on its sister program VIDA, a collaborative of agencies offering access to individual development accounts to their constituents, the MESA College Initiative partners directly with post-secondary educational institutions instead of with non-profit agencies and housing authorities, as in a traditional individual development account partnership. CASA of Oregon serves as the administrator and fiduciary organization of both the MESA College Initiative and the VIDA Collaborative.
Asset Building and IDAs
As a matched savings account, MESA and other individual development account programs support individuals and their families in asset-building through monthly savings, goal setting and financial education. Traditional asset goals include homeownership, microenterprise development and post-secondary education.
This concept of building assets to combat poverty is relatively new. Professor Michael Sherraden at the Washington University in St. Louis’ Center for Social Development introduced the idea that the cycle of poverty cannot be broken through an increase in income alone. Rather, he identified assets as a key piece to financial independence and self-sufficiency.
Since Sherraden’s seminal book, Assets and the Poor, was published in 1991, the asset-building movement in the United States has grown to reach the far corners of the country. From 1997 to 2002, the American Dream Demonstration showed that not only can people of low-incomes save, but they can build wealth through assets. In 1998, Congress enacted the Assets for Independence Act, that continues to support asset building across the country, including the MESA College Initiative.