Camden National Bank teaches students to save

    This spring, more than 35 Camden National Bank tellers, managers, lenders and service staff will visit Maine schools and speak about the importance of saving to over

900 students in 20 schools as part of the annual Teach Children to Save program.
    “One of the biggest concerns we hear in our communities is the lack of financial literacy in our youth,” said Gregory Dufour, president and chief executive officer of Camden National Bank. “Teach Children to Save Day, as well as many other year-round efforts conducted by the staff at Camden National, are examples of how we’re working in our communities to better prepare our youth for handling their own personal finances in the future.”
    Teach Children to Save was conceived in 1997 by the American Bankers Association (ABA) as a way of helping young people develop lifelong savings habits for students in grades pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. It uses lessons that bring together real life and classroom learning, incorporating hands-on scenarios and children’s experiences to help them understand the basic principles such as how banks work, the benefits of saving, as well as the importance of budgeting and balancing checkbooks.
    While most of the Camden National Bank staff goes directly to the schools, sometimes the schools go to the branches. In Greenville, the second grade class from Nickerson Elementary School has been making a field trip to the local Camden National Bank branch for the past seven years. “It all began when one of the students said he’d never been in a bank,” recalled senior teller Lucy Johnston. “So we set up a field trip to the bank, and gave the kids a tour. The vault was a big hit!”
    Johnston finds that while she focuses on talking to the kids about different denominations of money, how to spot fake currency, and ways to save, their teacher has been working with them on math skills, like counting, that go hand in hand with Johnston’s focus.
    In addition to the official Teach Children to Save Day which was held on April 23 this year, Camden National employees will continue to teach classes throughout the year. Camden National also sponsors the Camden National Bank Financial Scholars Program in several high schools. So far this year, the program has impacted over 100 high school students in three schools and covered a variety of financial issues ranging from savings and investing to credit scores and financing higher education.