One of the challenges facing all of us who work to promote financial literacy is helping connect those who create content, with those who deliver it. At Visa we are largely content creators and we rely on banks, credit unions, NGOs, government, parents and teachers to take our personal finance materials and deliver them to their audiences.
I frequently hear from those on the front line about how hard it can be to find the right content to use. Teachers and parents don’t have weeks to devote to scouring the web for the best content. Neither do government agencies. States in particular no longer have the luxury of reinventing the wheel to create their own programs. In many cases they don’t need to; the high-quality content already exists.
Smart state governments realize that helping their students learn the fundamentals of money management is more important than ever and are looking for innovative ways to teach it at a low or no cost.
Visa has stepped up to the plate by providing free classroom curriculum to states. Our latest partnership is with South Carolina Treasurer Curtis Loftis, who is launching a new program to help teach personal finance to elementary school children in the Palmetto State.
Thanks to Treasurer Loftis, South Carolina will be the first state in the nation to distribute two new personal finance video games we created: Peter Pig’s Money Counter and Money Metropolis. These educational computer games teach kids the fundamentals: from identifying and counting coins, to learning about saving, budgeting and earning.
Starting this week, the Treasurer’s office is distributing free disc copies of the games to every public, private, and charter elementary school in South Carolina. The Treasurer’s impressive outreach is being complimented by a statewide tour of elementary schools to promote the new initiative. From Charleston to Greenville, the Treasurer will be teaching children how to play these new games and providing those schools with tablet computers donated by Visa so they can also play the Android version.
This kind of model partnership brings together an expert content creator and an expert at content delivery, with children and taxpayers being the big winners. No new wheels required.
Posted by: Jason Alderman, Visa Corporate Relations on May 16, 2011 at 4:43 pm
