Yyokkia Lawson, a Master in Community Development student at the Carsey School, works within rural Southern communities to help provide greater access to home-buying counseling and financial literacy education through her nonprofit The Institute for Housing, Health & Economic Development (IHHED). Yyokkia was recently recognized for this work with a gold award at the 2021 University of New Hampshire Sustainability Awards.

Yyokkia founded IHHED after noticing a severe lack of housing counseling services, especially within rural Georgia, where she lives. She particularly wanted to help low-income Black residents living in the area, so she established a housing counseling training program to train and equip other professionals to assist in serving rural residents.

Check out Carsey's news release on all the Carsey students, staff, faculty and projects to receive awards at the 2021 UNH Sustainability awards at https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/2021/05/carsey-school-programs-and-students-receive-top-unh-sustainabil...

You can learn more about Yyokkia at https://bit.ly/3cJHRCQ