By Gerardo R. Partido
Variety News Staff

GUAM bankers are teaching the importance of savings to children as part of a national program that teaches kids to save.
The National Teach Children to Save Day was established by the American Bankers Association to highlight the importance of teaching the nation’s youth about saving money.
The event is held every April when bankers make presentations to students in grades K-12 about budgeting, saving, recognizing needs and wants, and how interest makes money grow.
Since the first National Teach Children to Save Day, nearly 36,500 bankers in the U.S. have made more than 46,900 presentations and reached in excess of 1.9 million children and teens across the country, providing them with money skills they’ll use throughout life.
On Guam, 56 local bankers kicked off the program by teaching the importance of savings at various island schools.
Banker volunteers from the Bank of Guam, Bank of Hawaii and Citizens Security Bank converged on classrooms in nine schools, reaching nearly 2,200 students and fulfilling their responsibility to teach financial literacy to students in public and private schools.
This is the fifth year that Guam bankers are participating in the program.
While students today are very tech-savvy and send photos to each other on their cell phones or use a CD-ROM to do their homework, most do not know the fundamentals of saving or basic money skills, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.
Local bankers belonging to the Guam Bankers Association cited recent studies which show that children are not learning about money management at school or at home.
And according to the U.S. Commerce Department, the nation’s abysmally low national savings rate rivals the rates during the Great Depression.
The Guam Bankers Association recognizes this as a serious national — and local problem — and has undertaken steps to correct it by participating in the national children’s saving awareness program.
Last April 25, 2006, dozens of local bankers also taught savings fundamentals to elementary, middle and high school children in the Guam Public School System.