Contact: Joe Hunter, 617.552.0419, [email protected]
Boston College Launches Financial Education Program for Inner City Youth
(Chestnut Hill, Mass.) -- Boston College's Graduate School of Management has launched "Kids Capital Management," a first-of-its-kind academic enrichment program in which Boston College MBA students help disadvantaged middle school children learn about the stock market and money management.
The centerpiece of the program is an investment management exercise in which the students, working with their MBA mentors, follow the stock of selected companies using the Internet and other research tools.
The students decide which companies to follow. They go online to learn more about each company and the performance of its stock. Simultaneously, they learn basic financial concepts, like growing money over time, and acquire fundamental financial skills, such as opening a checking account. The students also develop their computer and math skills, as they use the Web, Excel and other computer-based applications.
Kids Capital Management is the brainchild of Hassell H. McClellan, Dean of Boston College's Graduate School of Management. "We believe that by exposing children to finance and economics in a creative, fun way we will open up new career options for them and broaden their horizons," says McClellan.
Established in fall 1998 and funded by a grant from the Boston Foundation, the program is the first to use MBAs to mentor inner-city students in finance and money management. Both parties benefit from the program: the school children receive valuable reinforcement of their math and computer skills, while the MBAs learn important lessons about communicating complex ideas in a multicultural environment.
Approximately 40 students from Boston public schools are paired with an equal number of MBA mentors in the program. They meet on the Boston College campus, where the students come for weekly sessions as part of Kids on Campus, a mentoring program for Boston school children sponsored by the Boston College Graduate School of Management.
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