Business View Magazine | November 2020

139 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2020 relationship-building, reinforcing the benefits of banking locally and of working with friends and neighbors they know and trust. They do this by promoting the educational cause in the area, offering itself up as an educational resource for financial literacy and economic empowerment. “Banzai is a company we’ve partnered with to use their online gaming platform to introduce high-quality financial curricula into virtually every high school in our region,” says Villaronga. “In the wisdom of the state legislature here in Texas, they mandated many years ago that all high school seniors graduate having financial literacy, and they allocated zero dollars to it. It’s a gaping hole. We’ve rolled this project out not just in high schools but in quite a few middle schools and some elementary schools, as well. We give these kids a pre-test electronically, and then, after they go through it all, we give them a post-test. We can actually – metrically – give feedback to the principals, teachers, and superintendents of nine different school districts in El Paso County. It’s a really powerful process.” Another unique program is the one TFCU calls the High School Spirit Debit Card Program. “There are probably a couple of similar programs across the country,” Villaronga admits. “But what we’ve added that’s fairly unique is that we take a portion of the swipe interchange income – and we’ve signed contracts with all of the local public high schools and even some private ones – and we give it back to that high school’s booster programs. When you look at the whole of the United States, El Paso is extremely low- income. There are areas of our city, lots of them, that are under heavy government assistance, and there’s no discretionary income for these booster programs. I’ve heard heartbreaking requests from schools asking for donations to support their booster programs. I say, ‘Sure, what are you looking for?’ ‘Can we have a bicycle?’ they say. Think of how humble that request is. These are the schools that need it the most.” “With this debit card program, zero dollars come out of their pockets – they’re just swiping for EL PASO AREA TEACHERS FEDERAL CREDI T UNION