HESC Enhances FACTS with Multimedia
Pam Jerome
On March 31st, the staff from HESC’s Debt Management Initiatives (DMI) unit conducted two financial literacy presentations at Auburn High School.
The idea for HESC’s inclusion came form Erin Shurant, an Auburn High School guidance counselor. She had attended a presentation on HESC’s FACTS (Financial Awareness and Consumer Training for Students) program at a recent Guidance Counselor Training Workshop and thought it would be a nice compliment to her school’s Career Day.
An estimated 650 high school students were scheduled to attend each one hour long FACTS session – a challenge to HESC’s staff, accustomed to smaller sessions that allow for conversation and interactive exercises. The large audiences demanded new strategies for keeping teenagers interested in a one hour presentation about the importance of staying in school, budgeting, banking, credit cards, and protecting their identities.
The solution … incorporation of short video clips into the already established Moneywise, Your Financial 411 PowerPoint presentation to compliment topics such as how to create a monthly budget, the importance of protecting your PIN numbers and how to avoid identity theft. The videos were whimsical but spoke directly to the audience in a manner they were comfortable with.
The presentations were a big hit! The students actually applauded after the video clips. Erin Shurant and other faculty in attendance also enjoyed the presentations, commenting about the relevance of the information and agreeing that the videos complimented the presentations perfectly.
HESC looks forward to deploying this new large-audience format in future presentations.
If you are interested in asking a HESC DMI representative to conduct presentation at your school, please call Pam Jerome at (518) 402-3521, or email her at pjerome@hesc.org