Inner city Chicago teenagers learned useful budgeting and saving skills at a financial and leadership program operated by the students and faculty from DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business, the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business and the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) this summer.
“Because of this program, I learned how to budget, about leadership and how much it takes to become a leader,” Monae Miller, a particpatant and West Side resident, said. “I believe I know more things now than my peers who weren’t in this program. It just puts you ahead of the game.”
Miller and 24 other students selected by the CHA were ensconced in the six-week Financial Literacy and Leadership Institute on DePaul’s Loop Campus. The program featured skill-building lectures, field trips to financial institutions and guest lectures by business executives, and is part of a slate of skill-building activities sponsored by the City of Chicago through the CHA.
“DePaul really feels like Chicago to me,” Corliss Garner, vice-president of community affairs at BMO Harris Bank, said, “It made sense for these future leaders to partner with an institution that has programming that will help them develop and help them understand the depth and breadth of the city, and I think that’s what DePaul brings to them.”
Students participating in the program walked away impressed by the attention that DePaul faculty devoted to them through tout program—it’s not every day these kids get to talk face-to-face with college professors.