Photo by Josie Burkhart Belmont County District Library Children’s Librarian Anessa Keifer says the Thinking Money for Kids Program Grant the district libraries received will teach children about money and eliminate any anxieties when it comes to money.

MARTINS FERRY — Children can learn how to budget, save and earn money through the Thinking Money for Kids grant at the Belmont County District Library’s six branches.

The six branches include public libraries in Martins Ferry, Bridgeport, Bethesda, Victoria Read in Flushing, Shadyside and Powhatan Point.

Children’s Librarian Anessa Keifer applied for the grant in July 2023 and received a notification that all six branches had been awarded the grant in November.

“There was a chance that not all received it,” she said. “So, the news was pretty exciting.”

The grant program is a collaboration between the American Library Association and the Finra Investor Education Foundation. They selected 300 libraries across the United States to receive the grant for everything that comes with the program.

The program grant pays for a set of five games and six launchpad tablets. Keifer said over the course of the next year, the libraries will use the games to create programs that will promote financial literacy for ages 3-12, but everyone is welcome, and no one will be turned away. All programs are free and open to the public.

The games include Penny Pinchers’ Party, Currency Conga, Making Moo-lah, Pet Cents and Piggy Bank Theater. Each branch will receive six tablets that will circulate from person to person to take home and return them. The tablets come with preloaded financial educational games for at-home learning. They are also a closed system and don’t require any wifi.

Keifer will be leading the programs on Tuesday evenings at the libraries with Martins Ferry at 6 p.m., Powhatan Point at 4 p.m. and the rest at 5 p.m. Each branch will have five programs, regrouping next fall to add additional programs.

The first program took place last Tuesday night at the Shadyside Public Library. The next program is set to take place next Tuesday at the Martins Ferry Public Library, with each program taking place on the following Tuesday at a different branch. Each branch will play the board game in rotation before it moves on to the next one.

The library’s Facebook pages feature announcements about the program roughly two weeks before the events.

Keifer said the goal is to teach children about money they can make and eliminate any anxieties when it comes to money.

“Usually if you say finances or money or budgeting to somebody, the first thing they’re going to do is get stressed out,” Keifer said. “So, we want kids to be comfortable with those concepts while they’re young.”

She believes children should start getting comfortable with money when they’re young because managing money is a life skill.

“The economy is going to change,” Keifer said, “and if kids aren’t learning how to manage their money now, they’re not going to have a handle on it in a changing environment. So, we want to instill the basics, the principles before things get too complex.”

Penny Pinchers’ Party, a party planning game, is the first program each of the six branches will do for the children. Each participant will start out with $100 in play money, and they are able to pick from various items to have in their party, such as a costume trunk or petting zoo, which will teach them about budgeting.

Keifer said she is not going to overteach them, and she hopes the children will learn from the games.

Keifer said this is an opportunity to expand the Belmont County District Library’s programming in a way it hasn’t done before.

“This is absolutely novel for us,” she said. “At least in the past eight years that I’ve been here, we have not offered financial literacy classes of any sort for any age. And I think when people think of financial literacy, they think of adults and sorting things out. So, we’re kind of expanding people’s minds … Kids are sponges.”

Keifer hopes to get children excited about money in a responsible way through this grant.

“I want them to understand that money is fun, but it is also a really really important tool in your life,” she said.