Royal’s financial education team had a busy but incredibly fun four weeks during July and August sharing interactive lessons with kids in grades K-5 at 18 different YMCA of the North (formerly known as YMCA Twin Cities) locations. We partnered with YMCAs in Apple Valley, Burnsville, Eagan, Edina, Hastings, Lake Elmo, Rosemount, St. Paul, and Woodbury in Minnesota and Hudson and Prescott in Wisconsin. Each site was visited twice, reaching 877 kids through the delivery of 224 financial education presentations. Being mindful of precautions during the pandemic we are in, we were able to safely share lessons through limiting classes to 10 or less, wearing masks, and social distancing. On our first visit, students participated in our signature program, Takeover Day, and met Royal’s Super Heroes of Savings. Our caped presenters taught lessons about earning, spending, sharing and saving money, skip counting, entrepreneurship, and menu math. On our second visit, we shared lessons about coin identification, currency facts and designing bills, and budgeting, which included a game that our 4th and 5th grade students loved! A highlight of one of our visits was having a young student ask if we could share a story about someone we saved when we were working as Super Heroes. We hope we’ve saved countless kids from being uninformed about money matters! This was our most aggressive summer financial education program, based on communities covered and students reached, in the five-year history of Royal’s summer program offered to YMCA of the North participants.
