Money Smart Week began as a coordinated effort of the Money Smart
Advisory Council, a diverse group of more than 40 Chicago-area organizations
working together to promote personal financial literacy. Michael Moskow, who
was Chicago Fed president at that time, convened the Council's first meeting
in July 2001, during which members agreed to share resources and ideas to
achieve greater public awareness of the programs and services available in
the city of Chicago. The result was Money Smart Week 2002 — six days of
focused presentations by community groups, financial institutions, government
agencies, educational organizations, and financial experts, all designed to help
consumers learn to better manage their personal finances. The effort would
showcase different programs, help consumers get information, bring together
different organizations — many for the first time — and help these
organizations share expertise and leverage limited resources. Today, Money
Smart Week is much broader in scope and continues to expand, creating new
partnerships, heightened exposure, and substantive events. The Money Smart
Week model has grown beyond Chicago with successful campaigns taking
place in states such Indiana, Michigan, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin) and new
cities joining every year.
http://www.chicagofed.org/webpages/education/msw/history.cfm
Title: Money Money Honey Bunny
Topic: Money Smarts for Children
Audience: Preschool & Parents
"Promotional materials were absolutely wonderful. I used all of the bookmarks in
various different ways; one set had a bibliography of adult references while
another one was used for coin rubbing. I glued one each; a pennie, nickel, dime
and quarter to the back of a bookmark and introduced the concept of value in
story time. With the aid of parents, the children made coin rubbings and I allowed
them to keep those bookmarks. I copied other bookmarks as designed by you
and let the children "shop for books and other materials" in our library. I provided
shopping carts, cash registers, and empty grocery boxes for the activity. It was
wonderful, absolutely wonderful and I received raves on the program."
-- Sandra Cooke, Sherrills Ford Branch Library, North Carolina
Photos by Naperville Public Library
Money Smart for Children:
Dollars & Sense Reality Fair
Photos by Naperville Public Library
Title: It's Money Baby
Topic: Teen Financial Planning
Audience: Age 15-18
Title: Budgeting 101
Topic: The Basics of Budgeting
Audience: Teens & Adults
“Displays were featured in the children's, teen, and adult sections of our
library highlighting books, DVDs, and other resources available in-house or on
the web.”
Karen Hopkins, Converse County Library, Wyoming
Photos by North Dakota State University
Title: Basics of Investing
Topic: Investing/Stock Market
Audience: Adults
Title: You Earned It, Now Protect It! Preventing Financial Fraud
Topic: Fraud
Audience: Adults
“We are just getting started in implementing our "Smart investing @ your
library“ grant from the FINRA Foundation. Participating in Money Smart Week
will be a big part of the program next year when our programming schedule is
completely organized. Since we got such a late start this year I am pleased
that we were able to have one program.”
Barbara Roberts, Pelham Public Library, Alabama
Photos by Greenwood County Library
Title: Estate Planning
Topic: Estate Planning
Audience: Seniors
Title: Social Security Retirement Info. Session
Topic : Social Security Retirement
Audience : Seniors
“For the first year, I think attendance was pretty good. We did get a lot of great
feedback and I think the community would respond well to this being a yearly
thing. I believe attendance would increase each year. It was a good opportunity
to promote library resources related to each topic. I made some good
partnerships with people in the community who came to speak, and will use
those in the future not just for Money Smart purposes.”
Katie Head, Greenwood County Library, South Carolina
Photos by Greenwood County Library
April 21-28, 2012