Summer Youth Campaign

North Chicago, Illinois

DollarWI$E encourages every city to incorporate a financial education component into its summer youth employment program. Our goal is to make financial education a key component of every summer youth job.

A summer youth job can be a watershed moment in a youth’s life when he/she learns the responsibility of work and the excitement of earning money. Being hired for a job and receiving a paycheck is a teachable moment that can shape attitudes and habits that last a lifetime.

The DollarWI$E Summer Youth Campaign is an initiative to encourage mayors to use their summer youth employment program to deliver financial education to youth in their community. It’s all about seizing the teachable moment of a young person’s first paycheck. The idea is to use this window of opportunity to instill in youth conscientious habits and attitudes toward money and equip them with financial-management skills.

Seizing the teachable moment

DollarWI$E recommends these steps to introduce personal finance to summer youth.

Orientation

It is essential that you reach youth at orientation. Once they disperse to their various jobs for the summer, it is difficult to reconvene them.

Ongoing financial education

Ideally, financial education will be delivered to youth throughout the summer.

End-of-summer celebration

This event could be a financial education fair or an assembly with entertainment.

Ideas for success

  • Involve the mayor.
  • Have all youth participating in your program and receiving a paycheck open a bank account.
  • Work with your local financial institutions.
  • Have all youth participants sign a pledge to set aside a certain percentage or dollar amount from each paycheck in a checking or savings account. [link to PDF pledge forms]
  • Use the theme “Save a Dollar a Day.” It is an achievable way to encourage contributions to savings and preparation for the future.

Incentives for youth

Cities may find more success if they provide modest incentives to youth. Here are some ideas.
  • Offer to match youths’ savings.
  • Provide youth who complete a financial education curriculum a reasonable bonus at the end of their summer employment.
  • Withhold all or a portion of a youth’s final paycheck until he/she completes the financial education component of the program.
  • Provide entertainment incentives, such as free movie tickets or passes to the local amusement park.

Grants

Each year, the DollarWI$E Summer Youth Campaign awards grants of $4,000 each to five cities with innovative efforts to incorporate financial education into their summer youth employment programs. The next round of grants is expected to be awarded at the 80th winter meeting of The United States Conference of Mayors in January 2012 in Washington, D.C. Applications will be accepted beginning in November 2011. For more information, check back at this page in the coming months.

Additional resources