SunTrust awarded The President’s Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) for their volunteer effort to advance financial literacy

ATLANTA, GA-  SunTrust Banks, Inc. (NYSE: STI) announced today it has been awarded the top U.S. President's Volunteer Service Award at the Gold level for providing more than 15,000 volunteer hours to Junior Achievement (JA) during the 2015-2016 school year.

This marks the third time SunTrust has been awarded a U.S. President's Volunteer Award with JA.  JA's programs provide kindergarten through high school students innovative, hands-on work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy education. The SunTrust Foundation has previously made a $1 million grant to JA's capital campaign, and SunTrust provided $400,000 in sponsorship of JA Finance Park in Atlanta. In addition, SunTrust has committed $1.7 million to Junior Achievement Tampa Bay to build a similar Finance Park in Florida. Further, SunTrust is leading the onUp Movement to advance financial confidence across America.

"Supporting Junior Achievement is one of many ways SunTrust teammates work with students and put our purpose of Lighting the Way to Financial Well-Being into action," said Allison Dukes, president and chief executive officer of the Atlanta Division of SunTrust. "Receiving the President's Volunteer Service Award underscores our commitment to building financial confidence, and we look forward to ongoing volunteer opportunities with Junior Achievement to promote financial literacy."

In 2003, President George W. Bush established the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation (the Council) to recognize the valuable contributions volunteers make in communities and encourage more people to serve. The Council created the President's Volunteer Service Award program as a way to thank and honor individuals who, by their demonstrated commitment and example, inspire others to engage in volunteer service. In 2006, Junior Achievement became an official certifying organization for this award, which recognizes corporations with a U.S. presence that provide volunteers to teach JA programs anywhere in the world.

"SunTrust is a transformational partner of JA, and ultimately our entire community," said Jack Harris, president and chief executive officer of Junior Achievement of Georgia. "Fifteen thousand hours of mentoring and empowering children is an astonishing feat, and a testament to their unyielding commitment to advance financial well-being for all. We are proud to be a partner of SunTrust and together will continue to build more pipelines to economic opportunity for all."

About SunTrust Banks, Inc.
SunTrust Banks, Inc. is a purpose-driven company dedicated to Lighting the Way to Financial Well-Being for the people, businesses, and communities it serves. Headquartered in Atlanta, the Company has three business segments: Consumer Banking and Private Wealth Management, Wholesale Banking, and Mortgage Banking. Its flagship subsidiary, SunTrust Bank, operates an extensive branch and ATM network throughout the high-growth Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states, along with 24-hour digital access. Certain business lines serve consumer, commercial, corporate, and institutional clients nationally. As of September 30, 2016, SunTrust had total assets of $205 billion and total deposits of $159 billion. The Company provides deposit, credit, trust, investment, mortgage, asset management, securities brokerage, and capital market services. SunTrust leads onUp, a national movement inspiring Americans to build financial confidence. Join the movement at onUp.com.

About Junior Achievement USA® (JA)
Junior Achievement is the world's largest organization dedicated to giving young people the knowledge and skills they need to own their economic success, plan for their future, and make smart academic and economic choices. JA programs are delivered by corporate and community volunteers, and provide relevant, hands-on experiences that give students from kindergarten through high school knowledge and skills in financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurship. Today, JA reaches 4.8 million students per year in more than 100 markets across the United States, with an additional 5.6 million students served by operations over 100 other countries worldwide. Visit www.ja.org for more information.

Volunteer Spotlight

Today we hear from Kathy Tullos Young of Market Street Services about her first time volunteering at the JA Chick-fil-A Foundation Discovery Center.

As Principal and COO of a premier provider of community, workforce, and economic development strategic planning services, her perspective provides a look into the impact our programs can have on our entire community.

"I had heard great things about the Discovery Center – and after serving as a “Chief Volunteer Officer” alongside seven enthusiastic 6th graders from The Champion School in Stone Mountain Georgia – I can safely say that my expectations were easily met. The experiential program that JA Georgia has put together is impressive, and seamless integration of corporate partners turns what the students might have assumed would be a fun field trip into a realistic venture that is truly empowering and inspiring. The day trip to the Center (which serves 65,000 students a year) caps off an in-class curriculum-based experience led by teachers in the weeks prior to the visit."

Read about her whole experience here.

What's it like to volunteer with us?

A synopsis of volunteer Nathan Horton's experiences as a JA Discovery Center volunteer.

For the second time this year I had the opportunity to volunteer at the new Junior Achievement Discovery Center at Gwinnett. It is a beautiful facility with modern architecture built inside the new Discovery High School in Lawrenceville. Every day, hundreds of middle school kids from across the county attend a simulation at either Biz Town or Finance Park inside the facility for an alternative learning experience where they are immersed into a day in the life of an adult.

This fully immersive experience provides these kids the opportunities to use critical thinking skills and decision making like never before. They are faced with real life adult scenarios and must choose how to market their products and supply & demand pricing models in Biz Town to choosing between purchasing groceries or eating out to meet their personal budgets in Finance Park.

During a typical visit you will hear the kids make comments such as “insurance really costs that much?” and “do I have to buy my spouse a car?” They are blown away by the cost of dining out, vacations, and even clothes when it is coming out of their family budget.

In my first experience at the Junior Achievement Discovery Center in Gwinnett, I was able to mentor a group of 6th graders through running their store, in our case Home Depot. The CEO walked into the store and promptly informed me that she had studied, knew what to do and had this under control. What a relief! She ran her store and encouraged her employees to do their best, and they did. The CEO of our store stepped in and supported her employees as needed throughout the day even giving up a part of her shopping time (the best part of the day) to help make sure everything ran smoothly her store closing reports were correctly completed by the CFO.

It was an amazing experience watching as they make decisions to marketing, product pricing, and even ethical decisions, such as overselling and rainchecks. In the end, the store made a profit, repaid its business loans, wrote checks to all the employees, and everyone went shopping with those checks and got to take home some swag. It was a huge success.

At Finance Park, 8th graders become adults and are randomly assigned specific life scenarios. You may be a single mother with 1 kid, or a married couple with twins. You might be a young single guy working as an IT manager making $110K per year or a married couple working as an administrative assistant earning less than $30K. Regardless of your scenario, you have the same tasks to complete. You need to create a budget for your family.

You begin by learning what your net monthly income is, after the government takes taxes from your check. This alone was a shock to many of the kids. Once those conversation are complete, they kids then decide what percentage of their income to save. They learn to pay themselves first and create a retirement account and emergency fund before diving into expenses. Finally, with the money that is left, they create a conceptual budget, allocating the amounts they believe they will need to secure housing, transportation, food, clothing, insurance (required to buy health, home or renters, and auto if they buy a car), and about 20 other items including home and auto repair, entertainment, dining out, vacation, philanthropy and more.

While they created their budgets the conversation within the groups was amazing. You could see light bulbs going on in their heads. I heard “Wow, cable cost how much? We won’t have that” and “We can’t go on vacation this year”. I also heard, “My wife can ride the bus… I can’t afford luxury cars for both of us.” I encouraged him to put some money aside for an attorney.

After they create their budgets, the kids get to go shopping. The leave their groups and venture out into the center and to the other stores. They visit the car dealer and get a car, they visit the grocery and get food. They go buy insurance. It was here that many realized they couldn’t eat out every day, as they were forced to choose between food, insurance, and vehicles. They began to realize many of the hard decisions their parents made every day. It was awesome to be a part of the experience.

I could tell stories for hours about the conversations, the kids, the comments, the smiles and all the things that happened during the day at Junior Achievement Discovery Center. I may have learned a lot too. I was most amazed at the preparation the kids had done, the attention they paid, and their willingness to figure everything out. There were over 200 kids at JA Discover Center on the day I was there and there wasn’t a single behavioral issue. The staff a Junior Achievement is superb, the center is great, the kids are wonderful, and overall the entire experience is outstanding. I encourage everyone who can, to volunteer and see it for themselves. These kids will blow your mind.