Guest Columnist: Shawn Spruce

What do you get when you pack 96 teenagers, 53 community volunteers, nine merchants and enough blank checkbooks to fill a wheel barrow into a high school gymnasium?  A no holds barred, wild frenzied shopping spree better known as Mad City Money, a fully interactive financial skills simulation offered nationwide to teach sound money management to high school students.
 
Created by the National Credit Union Association, Mad City Money takes a different approach than a traditional class room learning environment to provide basic savings, budgeting, and decision making skills, and was presented recently to the freshman class at Cherokee High School in Cherokee, North Carolina.
 
The Mad City event was organized with community support from more than twenty partnering Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians tribal programs and local businesses that provided the necessary volunteers to run the simulation.  Staff from First Nations Development Institute, with whom the Eastern Band maintains a close partnership, focused on community based financial education training and were also on hand to provide technical support and customized program materials.