In December, the Heart of Illinois United Way’s Success By 6 initiative announced it will receive a two-year, $75,000 grant from the PNC Foundation to teach area children lessons in spending, sharing and saving and equip parents to reinforce those lessons at home.
The grant will allow Success By 6 to offer children’s activities, games and parent education workshops based on lessons from a financial education kit created for PNC by the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street.
Success By 6 will also conduct workshops to train nearly 90 early childhood educators in Peoria Public Schools District 150, Peoria County Bright Futures and Tazewell-Woodford Head Start.
PNC provided the funding in support of Grow Up Great, its bilingual program in early childhood education. Considered one of the most comprehensive corporate school readiness programs of its kind, Grow Up Great has earned national recognition for programming through $40 million in grants to numerous nonprofit organizations and other initiatives.
“Extensive research shows the return on investments in high-quality early education is significant and long lasting—positively impacting our children, society and economy,” said Doug Stewart, regional president for PNC Bank in central Illinois. “Through this financial education initiative with Success By 6, we can help young children in our region better understand that everything has value and show parents how to turn everyday moments into financial learning experiences for their kids.”
Free copies of the instructional kits are available at PNC Bank branches throughout central Illinois. To learn more about the Grow Up Great initiative, visit pncgrowupgreat.com.
