Enriching education

Candy, videogames and toys: These are some of the goods Surf City elementary school kids buy when they have some extra cash.

But students in Geoffrey Hammond’s fifth-grade class at Lake View School are learning that saving money they might otherwise spend on toys and candy can be beneficial, both now and later in their lives.

Marcelle Capps, a local resident and vice president with First Bank in Huntington Beach, is working with volunteers from Banking On Our Future, a program focused on teaching youth about everyday finances.

“It’s probably never too young to talk to kids about money management,” said Lake View Principal Collette Wright.

The program is broken up into four sections, with the first laying out the basics of money and banking.

As the students listened quietly and intently to Capps on March 2, she taught them about the importance of saving money and budgeting appropriately for both their needs and their wants.

Sneakers are a need, Capps explained, but Adidas sneakers are something extra.

The program is run by Operation Hope Inc., which tries to instill real-life lessons into school studies so that money and savings become part of students’ vernacular.

“It’s really neat that there are programs that enrich their education,” said Capps, who has worked in the banking business for almost 30 years.

Principal Wright said the fourth- and fifth-grade students and their parents are excited to have the program on campus.

“It’s just bringing it to the kids’ attentions,” Wright said. “They haven’t thought about it before.”

Many of the students do not yet have savings accounts, Wright said.

The adults involved with the program at Lake View agreed that if there had been a program like “Banking On Our Future” during their formative years, they might have been more prepared for adulthood. At the end of the four-week session, Moore said, many of the students will open bank accounts to put their new skills to the test.

First Bank, one of Operation Hope’s many partners, requires employees to participate in volunteer programs that give back to local communities. Volunteers go through a 90-minute training session on how to teach the financial literacy courses before they step into the classrooms, said Diona Moore, Orange County program coordinator for Operation Hope.

Operation Hope is a national nonprofit organization started by Los Angeles native John Bryant after riots devastated his home town in 1992. Hoping to reach underserved communities and give residents the chance to learn more about their fiscal opportunities, Bryant expanded his largely adult-oriented programs to students in fourth- through 12th-grades with Banking On Our Future in 1996. Since its inception, the program has educated over 150,000 students across the country, including 2,300 in Orange County.

Bryant and his youth program won Oprah’s Angel Network Use Your Life Award in 2001 and the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s John Sherman Award for Excellence in Financial Education in 2004. The program is prepared for more growth.

“We had a lot of adult programs, and we started to notice people had different credit challenges and poor money management skills,” Moore said. “Our CEO [Bryant] thought if we could reach people before they were adults, it would be useful.”

For more information about Operation Hope and its services, call (323) 249-7699 or (877) 592-HOPE.hbi.09-itc-2-C.1PhotoInfoU31ON6R620060309ivs72dkn(LA)Chanel Bolster, 10, reads “Banking on Our Future” handouts. hbi.09-itc-1-BPhotoInfoU31ON6RD20060309ivs71mknPHOTOS BY WENDI KAMINSKI / HUNTINGTON BEACH INDEPENDENT(LA)Chris d’Entremont, 10, of Fountain Valley, reads a banking-information booklet. at Lake View Elementary School in Huntington Beach. The “Banking on our Future” program will be an ongoing class taught to students through the end of March.