History
CMW is an example of making lemonade when life hands you lemons.
The founder, Lana Posner, had a very successful career in design and marketing. When she found herself in financial trouble, she realized she never learned about personal finances.
In 2006 she moved to Camden to explore ways to help young people learn the lessons of managing your finances that she had not learned in her formative years.
In 2007, Creative Money Works was formed to tackle the illusive task of teaching financial literacy to young people. The goal was to create new innovative approaches using extensive experience with music marketing and creativity.
While waiting for our 501c3 application to be approved, we connected with various youth organizations and learned there were thousands of children who went to bed hungry. We decided to take action to help. We created Feed Our Children NOW! and with the help of Kevin Lyman, founder of Vans Warped tour, the first food drive was held at Vans Warped Tour in Camden, New Jersey. The joint effort resulted in the collection of 2,580 pounds of food we were able to distribute to the children.
Ten years later our program, Feed Our Children NOW! along with aQire™Cares and Grow the Line are all thriving. We have helped feed more than a million meals and mentored hundreds of young people with job skills and hands on experience.
Our young volunteers are now running our current programs and we are launching our new
project. aQire™ The Goods.
CMW History
2016
Playlist Live Orlando April, 2016
2015
• 345,000 pounds of food in 42 cities • Facilitated the donation of a playground in Berkeley NJ with Alexandra’s Playground • A special Pasta Drive in Ventura to help • An attempt to break the Guinness book of World Records in Camden, NJ with extensive press and donation from Campbells resulted in..Read More
2014
413,000 pounds of food in 42 cities on VWT
2013
• 330,000 pounds of food in 40 cities on VWT • Special food drive with Breathe Carolina •We became a Google Grant recipient
2012
• We collected 198.700 pounds of food in 41 cities on VWT. • We seeded and opened 20 deposit only savings accounts with TD Bank and The Boys and Girls Club of Camden County. • Special food drive with Austin Carlile • South by So What • Raleigh Polooza
2012
aQire™Cares In December of 2012, Creative Money Works, Inc. and Rowan University’s Zeta Pi Chapter of Chi Sigma Iota hosted a holiday craft event at the Boys and Girls Club in Camden, NJ.
2011
• We collected 112,000 pounds of food in 44 cities on VWT. • We began working to seed and open savings accounts for low income young people with the Boys and Girls Club of Camden county.
2009
• As the crisis deepened we worked with Warped tour to enable a homeless young man to work our program on many dates at VWT. This proved problematic.
2008
• The banking crisis put our asset building on hold and we expanded our VWT presence with Feed Our Children NOW! presence to 4 cities. • We applied for a were granted 501c3 status by the IRS.
2007
We began interviewing young people in Camden and learned they were hungry. • We asked Vans Warped Tour if we could have a food drive during their tour date In Camden. They said yes, we created Feed Our Children NOW! and collected 2,580 lbs of food