Wauconda American Enterprise Team Creates Presentation to Save Money

The Wauconda American Enterprise (WAE) Project Team is a group of high school students who believe that financial literacy skills should be taught to a younger generation so that students are more educated on how to make economic decisions. WAE consists of three members: Emily Holmes, Lexi Meyer, and Sarah Ulrich. Together, they are striving to help educate younger students about saving money early in life. This group of girls has been visiting fourth grade classes at Robert Crown to teach the students about saving money. Despite the mandatory course in the fourth grade curriculum, many students never understand the whole concept of personal finance. The team created an interactive presentation that helped students reassesses their prior knowledge that they were taught during school, but the team elaborated on the topic. In order to successfully teach the fourth grade classes, Emily, Lexi, and Sarah created Project Up, Up and Away with Saving. This 30 minute presentation teaches students the ultimate goal of WAE which is to encourage students to budget their money, keep their money in a savings account, and be able to save money properly at a young age. The team was accompanied by Michael Barbini from Libertyville Bank and Trust company, vice president of small business in commercial banking. He taught the children about interest and different types of banking. The group recently attended FBLA State in Springfield, IL and advanced to compete at Nationals in June at Nashville, TN.