Making students financially literate.

Since financial literate is a skill required for all high school students to master to ensure that they live rich and successful lives, the Net Literacy student board decided to create a fifth core program in 2008.

By 2009, funding and support had been received from Lilly Endowment, Old National Bank, and Bright House Networks. During the summer of 2009, twenty students from eight schools worked together to build a website that included 20 student created videos and 200 “best of web” financial literacy videos and interactive games after an exhaustive research project that included a review of more than 5000 financial literacy websites.

In March 2009, 24 of Net Literacy student board members met with Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr. Tony Bennett. Dr. Bennett challenged the students to innovate novel service learning projects that would support the Indiana Department of Education’s goals of increasing student success. Net Literacy’s student board responded – and successfully competed for a $98,000 grant from State Farm and State Farm’s Youth Advisory Board. On February 22, 2009, State Farm Community Specialist Ed Perez presented the check to Net Literacy at the Indiana Department of Education.

“I am proud that Net Literacy, an organization made of Indiana students, successfully competed for State Farm’s financial literacy grant. This is the type of service learning project that encourages student success, and I congratulate them on this endeavor,” said Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Tony Bennett. Net Literacy is grateful for State Farm’s Youth Advisory Board’s support and advocacy.  During 2011, more than 125 student-created videos were added to the Financial Connects site.

Please start by reading What is Financial Connects to learn more about this program.

The contest is over but Net Literacy continues to add financial literacy videos to this program. Watch the video below to see how students used cable and broadcaster PSAs to promote the campaign and then click on the Financial Literacy Curriculum link on the menu to the left to watch the videos.