‘Securing the Bag’ Summit helps Gainesville families weather the storm

Published on July 03, 2025

To mark the start of hurricane season, the City of Gainesville hosted a family financial empowerment summit to help neighbors prepare for “gray sky” events like hurricanes while strengthening the financial skills needed to grow and protect wealth on those “blue sky” days when life is stable but good planning remains essential.

Called “Securing the Bag,” the free conference was organized by the Gainesville Fire Rescue (GFR) Community Health Division and the city’s Office of Government Affairs and Community Relations. Held at the Hilton University of Florida Conference Center on Saturday, June 28, it included a visit from Gainesville Health & Fitness founder Joe Cirulli, cross-generational family discussions, a community resource fair and breakout activities. Childcare and meals were provided at no cost, and each attendee received a financial toolkit to take home.

“This is about more than reacting to emergencies — it’s about preparing families to make informed, confident financial decisions every day,” said Gainesville’s Director of Community Health Initiatives Brandy Stone. “The sooner we start having these conversations, especially with our youth, the stronger and more resilient our community becomes.”

The summit offered two age-specific learning tracks:

• NextGen Wealth (Youth Track): Attended by almost 100 middle and high school students, this track used interactive simulations and workshops to teach core financial concepts such as budgeting, saving, entrepreneurship and smart decision-making. Youth worked in teams, made choices in real-time and saw how those decisions impacted financial outcomes. This provided a hands-on, engaging introduction to lifelong money skills.

• FutureFunds (Adult Track): Adults participated in disaster-focused financial planning exercises, learning how to safeguard their income, access emergency assistance and create budgets that can survive unexpected setbacks. The simulation-style experience gave participants a chance to practice responding to real-world challenges without the real-world consequences.

The event was made possible by the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund (CFE Fund), a national nonprofit organization that last year selected the City of Gainesville for an Emergency Financial Empowerment (EFE) initiative that assists local governments in building and expanding their emergency preparedness and response infrastructure to support residents' financial needs. The selection came with a $150,000 grant and technical assistance from the CFE Fund on connecting financial empowerment supports to emergency response procedures, ultimately working to provide residents with more streamlined access to financial support resources.

Local partners collaborating at the summit included Circles Gainesville, Peaceful Paths, Florida Legal Services, Alachua County, Neighborhood Housing and Development Corporation, the University of Florida Levin College of Law, Radiant Credit Union and others.