Published 12-19-23
Submitted by U.S. Bank
Originally published on U.S. Bank company blog
The U.S. Bank eMentor program, which is designed to help students plan for college, careers and adulthood through financial education and literacy assistance, recently wrapped its fall sessions, which featured more than 500 employee mentors paired with mentees.
The program offers high school- and college-aged students – many of them from diverse, underserved or low- to moderate-income communities – access to U.S. Bank volunteer mentors who can support the students’ college and career prep journeys, including guidance on personal finance.
Employees and students pair up and connect using UStrive – a virtual platform powered by the nonprofit UStrive.org that gives mentors and mentees flexibility to converse in ways that work best for them, whether that’s through a secure video chat or checking in via secure text messages.
In addition to college and career tools, the platform includes videos that the pairs can watch together or on their own and discuss, covering topics such as budgeting, credit, debt, fraud, saving, investing and paying for college, to give students a strong foundation in personal finance and an understanding of how to build wealth over the long term. Students who participate in the program are entered into a scholarship drawing for $1,000.
Recent mentor Shannon Morelos, who works on the bank’s Finance Enabling Functions team and is based in Kentucky, used her experience as a first-generation college student and her background in finance to help her mentee, a first-year high school student, plan what he’ll need to do to prepare for life after high school.
“He was really excited to learn about different budgeting guidelines – knowing he could have a portion of his paycheck to spend on extracurriculars – how to save and how he’s going