OFCU provides financial literacy to OHMS students

MEXICO — As part of the Partners in Education program, offered by the Oxford Hills Education Exchange, Oxford Federal Credit Union (OFCU) is partnered with Oxford Hills Middle School (OHMS) in South Paris. OFCU is in its fourth year of partnering with OHMS and is committed to bringing financial literacy education to students.

For the second year in a row, OHMS eighth graders were taught How to Open and Use a Checking Account, providing hands on activities to learn the basics of using a checking account responsibly and participated in Financial Fun @ the Farm, a program created by Oxford Federal Credit Union.

The events included programs by Oxford Federal Credit Union, Financial Authority of Maine (FAME), Healthy Oxford Hills and the Norway Paris Farmer’s Union.

In the classroom, eighth graders learned how to write checks, endorse checks, fill out deposit slips, balance checkbooks and use a debit card with materials supplied by OFCU.

After completing the classroom work, OFCU sponsored a field trip to Harvest Hill Farms, where students used their new skills in a fun way, wielding their way through a corn maze where they stopped at “checkbook stations” within the maze, manned by OHMS teachers and OFCU staff.

OFCU reached out to the community and asked some local businesses and organizations to provide additional financial education for the students. In all, there were four learning activities at Financial Fun @ the Farm that students rotated through: FAME presented their Get A Life game, where students learned about budgeting their money with the salary they earned; Healthy Oxford Hills taught students about healthy eating and healthy living and representatives from Paris Farmers Union gave a presentation in the barn about the cost of owning a pet.