Teaching dollars & cents in the classroom

Ebony, April, 1994

Carol Aranjo, the credit union's CEO and coordinator, sees the venture as an investment in the Black community's future. "The most important part of this credit union is to teach [the children] access and knowledge about the financial world. If they have those tools, no one can hold them back, no one can keeo them down, no one can keep them from becoming whatever it is that want to be," she says.

There is a critical need for families to support these efforts. Aranjo and other observers say parents should encourage their children as early as five years old to save. This can be accomplished, they say, by taking youngsters to the bank to open their own savings accounts, giving money instead of toys for Christmas and birthdays and by regular speaking with their children about money matters.

"Just like you need to know the fundamentals before driving a car, we need to treat money as an educational process, so when children are old enough to make it, they really know money basics," Giant Records' Mills concludes.