Junior Achievement offering financial education

PROVIDENCE – Junior Achievement has created two new series of free, downloadable teaching tools designed to help both teachers and parents talk to young people about smart money management.
The lessons, called Junior Achievement $ave, USA, are posted at www.ja.org , and cover such topics as the importance of budgeting, saving, understanding the cost of credit and how to use it and planning how to pay for college. The lessons are sponsored by the Allstate Foundation and are endorsed by the Junior Achievement CEO Council.
The classroom lessons are aimed at students grades 5 to 12, according to Junior Achievement. Each of the three one-hour lessons is targeted to a specific range of grades for implementation by Junior Achievement volunteers and schools.
In addition, Junior Achievement has created 12 lessons for parents to teach their children financial literacy.
“These new teaching tools respond to the heightened awareness that our future generation needs to understand the basics of personal finance,” said Lee Lewis, president of Junior Achievement Rhode Island. “The lessons are intended to get classrooms and families talking about finances, while providing young people with practical money management skills.”
Added Tom Celona, chairman of Junior Achievement’s CEO Council: “This type of education outreach is extremely relevant and important and we are so pleased to endorse this new program to help create new ways to reach students. We’d like to see schools in the state implement these classes during April and May and work toward a permanent solution for financial literacy education.”
Junior Achievement of Rhode Island reaches more than 10,500 students annually with its financial literacy, entrepreneurship and work-readiness programs. Additional information is available at ri.ja.org.