Youth Initiatives

Youth Week 2008 Success Stories

Kansas Blue Cross Blue Shield CU Click for larger view

Kansas Blue Cross Blue Shield
Credit Union
Stacy Montgomery

Shown is a screen-print of the photo and article about our Youth Week winner which was posted on our sponsor's intranet. We are fortunate to have support from the communications department of our sponsor (BCBS of Kansas) and how they help us get the word out to BCBS employees.

Daviess County Teachers Federal Credit Union
Lauren Mayhew

We have activities planned every day this week to celebrate saving your money and saving your Earth. We also have daily prize drawings for any youth who makes a deposit this week. For those kids who open a new youth account or deposit $10 to an existing account, we are giving away drawstring bags with seed packets, a free swim pass, and the large dollar bills from CUNA ($1-$100). For our Kids Club, we are matching the coins in their piggy banks, up to $30. We are doing a recycling drive, planting a tree on Friday for Arbor Day, and so, so, so much more. I think my brain got a little ahead of me! Our budget for this year was $750, and we have stayed pretty much on target for that... even with all the activities and prizes!

Monroe Telco FCU Click for larger view

Monroe Telco Federal Credit Union
Robyn Blaylock

This is a picture of the child that won our money tree. We displayed it in our lobby to get the kids excited about the possibility of winning it! Any youth that made a deposit during Youth Week was entered into the drawing to win the $50 money tree.

University of Louisiana FCU Click for larger view

University of Louisiana FCU Click for larger view

University of Louisiana Federal Credit Union
Melanie Riedl

The University of Louisiana Federal Credit Union kicked off Youth Week with a bang, offering juice and cookies, coloring sheets, and a “children’s area” where kids could sit and visit while parents did transactions with the credit union. Children were excited to make deposits and share with us what they are saving for, which ranged from a new bike to college funds.

Each child that came to the credit union also received a “photo” bank to encourage them to continue saving. At the end of the week, we will draw from all of the children who came and visited during the week for a “Game Night” basket filled with games like: puzzles, jacks, bubbles, and hand-held electronic games. This is our first time doing this promotion and we can’t wait to make it bigger and better next year.

Carter Federal Credit Union
Stacy Bordelon

Carter FCU Click for larger view

We are having a great time with Youth Week. We have visited nearly 275 students at area schools. During our visits we have stressed to them how important it is for them to save for their future. Events listed in our brochure:

Week Long Activities

• Enter to win either a $100 savings bond or $100 cash
• Guessing Jar with each deposit!
• Guess how much money is in the jar
• Winner receives money deposited into young savers’ account

Monday: “Helping others makes great ‘cents’!”
Donate a new or gently used book to an area charity
Donate a new or used guitar to the James Burton Foundation

Tuesday: “Got Green? Grow it at Carter Federal”
Receive an environmental fact sheet

Wednesday: “Draw interest with saving”
Prizes awarded to youth art and essay contest winners

Thursday: “Thinking Safe ‘Saves’ Lives”
A Public Safety Officer will be onsite from 3 – 5 p.m. Pick up your Child
ID Kit and get your child fingerprinted.

Friday: “Savings can be FUN!”
Join us for face painting from 3 – 5 p.m.

Acadia Federal Credit Union
Becky Bouley

We are giving gift certificates to all children 12 and under for a Lil’ Webkinz. We are also having a drawing for an iPod for children 13-18 at two of our branches. The only stipulations for both of these age groups to qualify for the giveaways is the child is present and they make a deposit of $5 for the younger children and $25 for the older children.

Aberdeen Proving Ground FCU       Click for larger view

Aberdeen Proving Ground Federal Credit Union
Janice Carey

Aberdeen Proving Ground Federal Credit Union (APGFCU) is excited to announce the local prize winner of its “Got Green? National Credit Union Youth Week” contest. The winner, Gabrielle Brock, of Aberdeen, was presented with four free admission tickets to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Ms. Brock, a four-year-old member of APGFCU, was randomly selected in its contest drawing on April 30, 2008.

Members First CU Click for larger view

Members First Credit Union
Trish Ross

We are celebrating Youth Week, but aren't requiring deposits be made. The first 100 Kid’s Club members to come into the credit union during Youth Week receive a Save, Spend, and Share jar.

Kent County CU Click for larger view

Kent County Credit Union
Christie Cierlak

Walls of hand-decorated petals adorned Kent County Credit Union’s lobbies in celebration of National Credit Union Youth Week. The petals designed by members, ages 12 and under, underscored the theme of “Got Green, Grow it at the Credit Union.” Pictured is Nicholas Bloch, age four, with his winnings from a random drawing of petal entries. All youth members who made a deposit also received a dogwood sapling to plant in honor of Go Green!

CASE Credit Union
Karen Casler

CASE Credit Union hosted a visit by State Representative Barb Byrum to the credit union’s in-school branch at the Capital Area Career Center in Mason on April 21, in recognition of National Credit Union Youth Week. CASE Credit Union, in partnership with the Capital Area Career Center (CACC) since 1997, offers a teller internship at the in- school credit union branch for students enrolled in the CACC’s banking and finance curriculum. Through this program, students have the opportunity to earn college credit at Lansing Community College as well as potential employment with the credit union.

Pictured are student intern Sam Fata (left) of Lansing Catholic High School, representative Barb Byrum (middle), and CASE Credit Union sales and service leader Nicole Putman.

Wexford Community CU Click for larger view

Wexford Community CU Click for larger view

Wexford Community Credit Union
Rochelle Cowles & Liz

During National Credit Union Youth Week, Wexford Community Credit Union had daily drawings for a variety of things such as the State Quarter Bears, Movie Bucket Gift Baskets, Plush Piggy Banks, and a $100 Visa gift card. We also had contests for the youth, such as a coloring contest and a penny jar contest. During this week we scheduled the local sheriffs departments to set up at our locations and conduct fingerprinting for our youth members. We also had a local insurance representative set up at each location offering youth life insurance policies to our membership. In addition to these events, we held a kids cookies and punch day. This was our first year participating in National Credit Union Youth Week. While we didn’t have an enormous turnout, we are excited to continue this on a yearly basis and build upon this year.

Limestone Federal Credit Union
Amy Blanchard

Limestone FCU Click for larger view

We had a great week. We are only an $18M credit union in a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that has two different credit unions. Our advantage is that we are directly across the street from the middle school/high school. We also have a branch there that was open on Monday and Wednesday during youth week. We had almost $6,000 with 126 youth deposits (70 youth participants) in just five days!! This included a handful of youth CDs opened.

We had to order prizes an additional two times to keep up with the amount of kids depositing. 126 deposits = 126 prizes given away. I taped the seed packets to a pencil and made a “flower” arrangement for deposit #1, calculator or juggling balls deposit #2, tote bag deposit #3, Got GREEN beanie cap deposit #4 and deposit #5 they got to choose.

As you can see from the photo we went green and RE-USED paper grocery bags as our prize drawing containers. These will then be shredded and RECYCLED. Coloring pages were of flowers and/or trees. Youth received a coupon for a free ice cream cone at our local ice cream establishment which we made prior arrangements with.

Grand Prizes:
LeapFrog Leapster with a game (0-7 year-olds)
Nintendo DS with 2 games (8-11 year-olds)
iPod Nano (12-18 year-olds)

Other prizes included movie passes, video rentals, Subway cards, slice of pizza with a pop, books, and toys for 0-4 year-olds. We served snacks and punch daily, including Subway cookies, popcorn from our local movie theater, snack cakes, chips, etc. Our total expense was just over $1000. Not a bad investment in our youth.

Isabella Community Credit Union (ICCU)
Heather Harris

This week, we are giving away crisp $1 bills to all young people visiting our credit union.

It was easy to implement, consistent with the "Go Green" theme, and has been very well-received.

Generations Family Federal Credit Union
Cyndy Bellaver

GFFCU was very pleased with the results of National Credit Union Youth Week. This was our first year participating in the CUNA National Youth Savings Challenge and we must say we had a lot of fun!

Setting our goals was somewhat of a challenge, not having done this before. However, we were pleasantly surprised when we met and exceeded our goals. We reached 100% of our goal on new accounts opened. We reached 152% of our goal with young members making deposits into their accounts, and we really exceeded the total dollar amount deposited, reaching 1072% of our goal. Needless to say the first time was certainly the charm!

We had treats, trinkets, tips on saving money and the environment, and a $50 drawing that a lucky 12 year-old boy won! The members enjoyed seeing pictures of the staff when they were young and finding out what the staff’s saving goals are. We had a grand, green week!