Hoops 4 Wealth

Building financial capability and resilience for people on low incomes in the Northern Territory

BSL collaborated with  Hoops 4 Health  (H4H), a First Nations-led organisation based in the Northern Territory, as part of an action research project: Building financial capability and resilience for low-income people in the Northern Territory. Funded by the Department of Social Services (DSS), the project aimed to enhance the financial capability and resilience of people on low incomes living in the Northern Territory. 

Following extensive scoping and learning, we partnered with H4H to further develop the  Hoops 4 Wealth  (H4W) program. H4W is a healing-centred and trauma-informed financial capability program that brings together First Nations practice, wisdom and neuroscience to support wellbeing, re-empowerment and resilience. 

BSL and H4H co-designed the evaluation approach to support the development of the H4W program. We found strong outcomes:  

• Better everyday money management and healthier choices. Participants told us they were making money last between payments, making healthier choices, and distinguishing between needs and wants.  

• Saving. Participants were saving, whether for Christmas, longer-term aspirations or to manage cultural obligations, and they are encouraging others to save, too.  

• Planning and setting short and longer-term goals, including plans for getting a job or investing royalties to develop community-based businesses.  

• Making sense of meeting their obligations to their family, their community and themselves. The program recognises the importance of cultural obligations for First Nations people and distinguishes between sharing and exploitation or abuse.  

• With limited access to responsive financial education participants were learning about financial rights and responsibilities including understanding tax, superannuation, bank accounts and scams, often for the first time. And they wanted to learn more.  

• Taking little steps towards resilience. The program emphasises First Nations’ success, enabling a sense of accomplishment and a desire to learn more. By recognising the past and contemporary harms of structural and systemic racism, it builds understanding, trust and resilience. Supporting participants to regulate their emotions and become more resilient enables them to take ‘little steps towards resilience’. 

These outcomes were enabled by: 

• H4W’s healing-centred and trauma-informed approach, which recognises the structural and systemic challenges facing participants and the importance of social and emotional wellbeing.  

• Promoting a sense of accomplishment. Success is defined by participants, supporting a sense of accomplishment. Achievements are celebrated with a graduation ceremony, in which participants are presented with a certificate of completion that notes which sessions they attended.  

• Respected facilitators and a relational approach. Building trust and engagement takes time. Having skilled, well respected and connected facilitators is key to driving engagement and maintaining strong organisational and community relationships.  

• Supporting engagement by focusing on wellbeing. Basketball, food and fun create a safe learning environment, helping participants regulate their emotions and engage. Providing food is also important, especially as participants may not have eaten. Vouchers are another incentive to support engagement in the program.  

• Developing learning and employment pathways. Champions act as role models to other participants, their families and communities, and demonstrate the value of learning and personal development. In 2025, two First Nations men and one First Nations woman became champions and continued to engage with the program as co-facilitators and as volunteers with other H4H programs.  

• Developmental funding and capacity building through partnership. DSS project funding enabled H4H to further develop and expand its prison-based program to be offered in communities in Darwin and Alice Springs. As an action research project, there was time to research, consult and collaborate with BSL acting as a learning partner to help H4H consolidate their data management infrastructure and policies, and provide advice on program development and reporting.

For more information about the research and evaluation, please contact Dr Dina Bowman dbowman@bsl.org.au