Financial Literacy Educator  Conference Attracts Over 100 for Second Year

December 2nd, 2005 (Providence College: ’64 Hall - Slavin Center) -  For the second year, the RI Jump$tart Coalition and the URI Center for Personal Financial Education have teamed up to train middle and high school educators in financial literacy topics via the free Financial $marts for Students educator conference.

RI General Treasurer, Paul J. Tavares and eight expert presenters will offer academic and financial industry best-practice information and materials with the purpose of elevating educators’ abilities to teach students in a variety of financial topic areas including; budgeting, use of credit, spending habits, gambling, investing, insurance, avoiding identify theft and financial fraud.

RI Jump$tart Coalition Executive Director, Jim Hedemark, pleased with second-year registration explains the popularity of the conference, “Educators have such a balancing act to perform in classrooms regarding personal financial topics.”  He continues, “High school students especially are so sophisticated and worldly, that educators must use techno-speak and youth pop-culture language to be credible with students, while at the same time introducing basic financial principal topics from that are so desperately needed by the next generation before the fully engage today’s dynamic and challenging financial marketplace.  This conference goes a long way to pull these worlds together.”

The importance of financial literacy education for youth has been well established, especially during the past several years.  Educators, businesses, civic organizations and governments have placed heightened emphasis on the issue, with several countries establishing national initiatives aimed at helping young people enter the financial marketplace from a position of real-world knowledge.

A leading financial literacy survey, conducted on a national basis in the United States by the national Jump$tart Coalition since 1997, found in 2004 that of the over 4,000 high school students from across the country included in the survey, two-thirds receive a “flunking” grade, with the average score being 52.3 percent for the 31 question survey.For more information on this survey, please refer to www.jumpstart.org.

Responding to the needs of educators to keep current in financial matters and transfer timely, best-practice skills, materials and information to students, many sponsors have shown tremendous corporate citizenship by making the 2005 Financial $marts for Students educator conference free to educators.These include:

Platinum Sponsors

• CollegeBoundfund
• McGraw-Hill Companies
• Money Management International Education Foundation
  

Gold Sponsor

• Sovereign Bank
  

Silver Sponsors

• Providence College (site sponsor)
• RI Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals AFT AFL-CIO
• Wall Street Mortgage Associates, Inc.
• The Providence Journal Company
• Rhode Island Business Educators’ Association