First, outline your goals and clearly communicate them to staff so they understand what the financial literacy program is trying to accomplish. Make sure to consider state and national standards, relevant statistics, and the community’s needs when developing your goals and curriculum. Second, have your staff watch the mini-lessons and review the podcasts and tools in this Click & Go to get an introduction to financial literacy and how it can benefit your program’s youth. Third, make sure that staff scaffold learning for students by introducing concepts and activities in small pieces and working up to more complex ideas. Staff may become frustrated if they are directed to incorporate large concepts, like budgeting, without building a foundation. Ask staff to begin by focusing on basics like spending and saving, then developing the activity into a larger project like a monthly or yearly budget. Finally, discuss with staff your plans for recruiting and including community partners. Staff members should be able to rely on their own experiences and knowledge for certain concepts, but they cannot be expected to know everything about financial literacy. Good local partners can fill in the gaps and offer enrichment opportunities that staff might not be able to provide

Financial literacy impacts several student needs beyond money management and sound financial decision making. Because financial education is rooted in real-life scenarios, students develop essential 21st century skills while learning important concepts that will transfer into their adult lives. Introducing financial literacy can also help fulfill your program goals in areas like family engagement and community interaction. Families might become more engaged if you provide training for them to assist youth in developing skills at home, and caregivers can advance their own knowledge through workshops and connections with local financial institutions. These connections will prove important to your program, too. Financial literacy instruction requires willing partners to provide information, assist with teaching, and offer services to students and the surrounding community. These relationships can spread beyond financial literacy into other areas of your program and help with recruiting new partners.

Financial literacy learning should begin as early as pre-kindergarten, when activities can center on understanding the concept of money and making simple spending and saving decisions. As students get older they can learn more complex financial concepts such as bill payment and interest accrual. National learning standards from organizations like Jump$tart and the Council for Economic Education offer grade-level benchmarks to guide financial literacy curriculum. For more ideas on age-appropriate activities, see the Financial Literacy Knowledge and Activities Across Age Groups tool.

Involving community partners is a fantastic way to meet the needs of your students and their adult family members. Finding partner programs or organizations that are based in your community increases the likelihood that their knowledge and program offerings will directly meet your program’s identified needs. Once you’ve identified potential partners, do a little research to learn more about them. Then, connect via email or a phone call. Discuss ways your out-of-school time program and the partner organization can collaborate. And finally, create a memorandum of understanding that outlines the collaboration and clarifies expectations. For more information, see the Partnership Planner tool or the Y4Y course on Strengthening Partnerships.

Keeping students engaged is directly correlated to providing learning opportunities that are meaningful and enjoyable. To learn more about how to identify needs and intentionally design activities, visit the Y4Y Summer Learning and Continuous Education courses, or use this tool to help you identify and define participants’ needs: /tools/conducting-your-program-needs-assessment. Also, remember that you don’t need to do it all yourself! Enlist help from partners who have expertise in financial literacy to provide fun and engaging programming. Banks, libraries, local community organizations and even adults affiliated with your program can be great resources to provide input, guidance or programming. Check out the podcast on financial literacy partnerships for more ideas on where to begin. Also see the Y4Y course on Strengthening Partnerships for additional items to consider when establishing or maintaining a partnership.

All people need to understand how to make sound financial decisions and develop the skills to manage credit and debt. Social and economic status do not determine financial literate. Your first step should be conducting needs assessments to determine the needs of your students and their families. The results of those assessments will help you design appropriate activities that meet the most urgent and important needs. Use this tool to help you identify participants’ needs: Conducting Your Program Needs Assessment.