Tyrese returned to Grape Street Elementary School in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles Tuesday to help educate kids about something the successful recording artist and actor knows plenty about: money.

Sponsored by Operation Hope, Tyrese's appearance at his alma mater is part of the Banking On Our Future Across America program to teach financial literacy to third, fourth and fifth graders nationwide. Volunteer bankers will visit inner-city schools in Los Angeles; Oakland; Portland, Oregon; Cleveland; New York; Kansas City, Missouri; Boston; Philadelphia; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; and Baltimore to teach financial fundamentals to students.

"My biggest point is that a lot of people want to be stars, but it's one thing to get in the door, it's another thing to maintain," said Tyrese, surrounded by students in the school's library. "We're here to instill the truth and reality about finances into these kids.

"If your mom doesn't understand these things and your dad doesn't understand them, it falls to the kids to break the cycle," he continued. "It's an all new language for them, but now's the time to start. If I had this knowledge then, I would be a lot more financially set than I am now."

John Bryant, founder of Operation Hope, stressed the importance of teaching kids basic banking such as how to open and maintain checking and savings accounts, the value of credit and the importance of investments.

"Predatory lenders and unscrupulous check-cashing companies target the economically uneducated and the economically unempowered," says Bryant. "We can choose to run them out of business by not giving them business."

COLIN DEVENISH
(October 23, 2003)