Visa Celebrates Credit Education Week
Sponsorship of Week-Long Event is Another Example of Visa's Commitment to Educating Canadians About Wise Spending and Saving Practices
TORONTO, Nov. 15 /CNW/ - Visa Canada announced today that it will sponsor Credit Education Week Canada 2010 (CEWC 2010), which is scheduled for November 15th - 19th. Reinforcing Visa's global commitment to financial literacy, the company believes that it is essential to contribute to and participate in important conferences like CEWC 2010. This is the fourth year in a row Visa Canada has supported Credit Education Week.
"For more than a decade, Visa Canada has provided financial literacy resources to help Canadians learn basic skills like financial management, goal setting and budgeting," said Melissa Cassar, Head of Corporate Communications, Visa Canada. "Credit Education Week is just another opportunity for us to show our dedication to enhancing the level of financial literacy in Canada."
CEWC 2010 will have a special focus on providing financial education to newcomers to Canada. There will be over 30 events running throughout the week across Canada.
Participation in many CEWC 2010 events is free and the featured Professional Development Day (scheduled for November 16th), brings together leading experts from the financial services industry, consumer advocacy groups, community organizations and government to help teach professionals, front line service providers and individuals best practices in financial education.
"We are delighted to have Visa Canada return as a sponsor for CEWC 2010," said Laurie Campbell, Executive Director, Credit Canada. "This sponsorship combined with Visa's suite of existing programs like Practical Money Skills and Choices & Decisions demonstrates the emphasis they have put on financial education."
In addition to sponsoring CEWC 2010, Visa Canada will award $1000 to the winner of a Grade 12 essay writing contest. The scholarship award will be presented at the conference's gala dinner.
As part of its goal to promote financial literacy in Canada, Visa Canada developed and maintains Practicalmoneyskills.ca, a site that provides consumers, parents, educators and students access to free educational resources, including cost calculators, budget templates, games, quizzes, and more. Practical Money Skills is available online in French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and many other languages. Additionally, Visa Canada has worked with teachers to develop Choices & Decisions, a program that provides practical, ready-to-use, lesson plans for use in Canadian classrooms.
In April 2010 Visa Canada launched Financial Soccer, a fun online video game that combines the structure and rules of soccer with financial education questions of varying difficulty. To date Visa has rolled out Financial Soccer in more than 30 countries. The game is now available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Bahasa at www.financialsoccer.ca and has reached the milestone of being played over one million times around the globe.
Financial education has been a global priority for Visa since 1995. Visa has an ambitious plan to share its financial literacy programs with 20 million people worldwide by May 1, 2013.
About Visa Inc.
Visa Inc. operates the world's largest retail electronic payments network providing processing services and payment product platforms. This includes consumer credit, debit, prepaid and commercial payments, which are offered under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink and PLUS brands. Visa enjoys unsurpassed acceptance around the world, and Visa/PLUS is one of the world's largest global ATM networks, offering cash access in local currency in more than 170 countries. For more information, visit www.corporate.visa.com.
For further information:
Melissa Cassar, Visa Canada, 416-860-8895, [email protected]
Dan Madge, Fleishman-Hillard, 416-645-8188, [email protected]
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