Public-Private Financial Literacy Partnership is Model of Success in Mississippi

Amid the rising calls for innovative financial education solutions to empower individuals and families to make better informed personal finance decisions, the Mississippi State Treasurer’s Office has answered the appeals with the development and launch of the Treasurer's Education About Money (TEAM) program.

TEAM was conceived and introduced as an educational resource that teaches students about rudimentary personal finance topics, including saving, budgeting, investing, insurance, taxes, credit cards, college savings, and mortgages. The initiative’s primary objective is to promote the importance of financial literacy to Mississippi students, but many other tangential benefits are emerging as highly positive byproducts of the TEAM program.

The program’s prominence that has caught the eyes of financial education professionals stems from its structure as a successful alliance among both public and private entities. TEAM’s supporting partners include businesses, nonprofits, educators, and representatives from many Mississippi communities. State Treasurer Lynn Fitch has taken a lead role in promulgating the virtues of the public-private nature of this initiative as a model for future programs that combine the financial and other benefits afforded by private support with the advantages provided by public resources to yield the greatest impact among program participants.

Industry observers are quick to point to TEAM’s success to date, with students who complete the program showing a forty percent increase in their financial literacy. As a result, the Mississippi program is being hailed as a model for the development and roll-out of future public-private partnerships, which should bode well for the continued growth of the financial literacy movement in the months and years ahead.