| www.jamaica-gleaner.com | SPECIAL ADVERTISING FEATURETHE GLEANER, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2018 E12

T-shirts identified CaribDe, co-sponsor of the event.

Students hard at work on their budgets

Media personality, Jenny Jenny interacts with students in the

entertainment segment.

Students interested in purchasing luxury items pause for advice from a

volunteer.

Jamaica Co-operative Credit Union League’s President Winston Fletcher

(left) shares a laugh with RJR’s ‘Two Live Crew’ at the outside broadcast

to launch Financial Reality Month.

The 10 excellent budgetters pose with their $5000 share certificates, which was one of the prizes they received. CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS

Students purchasing cars.

Students line up to ‘pay’ utility bills at the Credit Union Reality Fair.

Volunteers assist the students.

Credit Union volunteer assisting students with their budgets.

AFTER THREE weeks of Credit

Union Financial Reality, the

month’s activities climaxed

last Friday with the Youth Financial

Reality Fair at the Golf View Hotel

in Mandeville, Manchester. Just over

130 students from high schools in

Kingston, St Catherine, Portland,

Westmoreland, Manchester,

and St James attended the event.

Credit unions marketing

officers/managers representing

several credit unions and the

Jamaica Co-operative Credit Union

League executed the activities for

the fair. Present also were

volunteers from Caribbean

Development Education which co-

sponsored the event.

Well known social media

influencer, ‘Dutty Berry’ and radio

personality Jenny Jenny played key

roles: the former was the moderator

for the spending event while the

latter brought tons of vibes and had

the students showing off their

singing and dancing talents.

The event was arranged to allow

the students, who were earlier in

the month, taught in a classroom

setting about creating budgets, to

simulate the spending of a month’s

salary. They were helped in their

awareness and at the end, many

testified to their difficulty in

budgeting, while others said that

they had developed an

appreciation of the financial

challenges faced by their parents.

This fair was the second such,

with the first being held last year.

The goal is to reach 500 high-school

students in three years and to bring

these students into credit unions as

savers. This is only the start of a

process to grow the youth

demographic in credit unions.

JCCUL launches book, the history of the credit Union movement. The history of the Credit Union Movement has been captured in the first book

of its kind for the movement. The book, ‘Founders & Keepers’ is a collection of reflections from persons who were pioneers of the movement,

and who worked alongside Father John Peter Sullivan, the founder, to start and build the movement in the 1940s. It also contains reflections

from some present-day influential volunteers who participated in its development.The book was made public on April 5, with a copy being

deposited with the National Library of Jamaica. Here in photo, Winston Fletcher, president of the Jamaica Co-operative Credit Union League

presents a copy to Monique Forgie-Scott, collections manager for deposit to the library’s catalogue.

Financial Reality Month climaxed with youth fair