November 30, 2009

Save the Future to graduate second class of Baltimore teens

Save the Future, a program in which Johns Hopkins undergraduates teach “financial literacy” to Baltimore teens, will hold its second annual graduation ceremony at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 4, at the Baltimore branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Phillip Phan, a professor and vice dean at the Carey Business School, will speak at the event.

The program was created last year by Lucas Kelly-Clyne, now a senior in the School of Arts and Sciences. Carey Business School professors Kwang Soo Cheong and Ken Yook, along with Kelly-Clyne and four other undergraduates, served as tutors during the initial, fall 2008 session.

Thirty students from the Youth Opportunity education and career training program, the National Academy Foundation high school and the Institute of Business and Entrepreneurship high school took part in the 12-week after-school course held this semester on the Homewood campus. They will receive certificates in financial literacy at the ceremony.

Save the Future’s curriculum covers skills that range from opening a checking account to understanding the stock market. This year, 15 Johns Hopkins undergraduates worked in the program as tutors; no JHU professors were involved.

“In an American society where 54 percent of 18-year-olds have a credit card and only 33 percent know how to read a bank statement, balance a checkbook or pay a bill, financial illiteracy is a major concern,” said Kelly-Clyne, a political science major. “Our goal is to introduce money management as an important concept that teens should be considering and continually learning about as they approach adulthood.”