Availa Education Outreach Platform

According to a new survey from the National Financial Educators Council, a lack of personal finance knowledge costs an estimated average of ,389.06 per individual, or billion total in the U.S. each year. Additionally, nearly 20 percent of respondents said they lost over ,500 last year due to gaps in knowledge. As a bank we see fraud attempts daily, and the target is usually our elderly customers. Thinking about that broke my heart and I decided we as a leader in our communities need to do more to combat those frightening numbers. Availa Bank's 17 branches span the central and southwest quarter of the state of Iowa. The program tasks each of our branches to get out into their communities with some type of financial education at the very least quarterly. This outreach can be anything from reading a savings book to a kindergarten class, to hosting a college information night highlighting college loans and financing, to dropping off fraud information at the local elderly care center. We have built a library of resources for our branches to use when considering what their plans for the outreach in their community and we have numerous pre-built presentations so the employees can have everything at their fingertips and make the outreach a very easy and seamless thing to do. We have been promoting financial literacy since the start of 2022 with an official launch date of 6-15-2022 in conjunction with World Elder Abuse Day. Since that time we have touched over 450 people with our financial education efforts. Our efforts have included the following plus many more outreach items.

Here are some of the videos we've created to help people figure out How2Bank: https://www.availa.bank/about/how-to-videos/