| KidzBANK
is a fun, educational program for schools, in partnership with
their local financial institutions, for teaching the habit of
saving and other financial life skills to their students. Our
country is faced with a negative savings rate and an un-banked
population of 12 million households. KidzBANK is an excellent
tool for changing this by introducing young citizens and their
families to financial institutions and creating a lifetime
savings habit.
Financial
institutions cannot open accounts for all first grade students
for amounts as small as $0.50. However, the KidzBANK program at
their school can accept these deposits for these young students
and financial institutions can act as the depositor of the
school's KidzBANK account. Students that have success in the
KidzBANK program are encouraged to continue saving through a
personal banking relationship with the financial institution as they
become part time wage earners.
And KidzBANK
teaches more than just the savings habit because it is the
students' bank and was designed for them to operate. As students
move to a higher grade and continue to save in KidzBANK, they
will have a chance to use the Windows software program that
processes the KidzBANK accounts. This program provides numerous
life skills learning opportunities including an introduction to
banking, an understanding of the value of interest, real life
computer application skills such as setting up accounts,
printing and analyzing reports, computer security and the
ability to export data to build financial spreadsheets. Lesson
plans can include a general overview of the financial industry
and cross curriculum learning experiences that correlate to
state and local standards in math, technology, social sciences
and information literacy.
Financial
institutions can participate in the program by joining in the
introduction session with the students and publicly help promote
the program with announcements of their sponsorship through
letters from the school and other public media announcements.
The students will operate the program and the financial institution
does not have to be involved on a regular basis. However, this
is an excellent opportunity for representatives of the
institution to educate these future customers and their families
about why they should do business with an insured financial
institution, the products it offers and the reasons for
developing a long term relationship with their community banker.
KidzBANK is an
exciting team project by schools that want to "make a
difference" and "civic minded" financial
institutions. These joint efforts to teach their young citizens
fiscal responsibility and valuable life skills will benefit
their communities for generations.
|
