BBB Sponsors Michigan Teen Consumer Education Competition
SOUTHFIELD -- For the second consecutive year, your Better Business Bureau Serving Eastern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula will sponsor the Michigan chapter of the National Consumers League's 2011-12 LifeSmarts competition. LifeSmarts is a consumer education competition that challenges teens in grades 9-12 on real-life consumer issues through online quizzes and live contests. The competition will culminate with the National LifeSmarts championship where teams and individuals are awarded academic scholarships and prizes.
"Our inaugural year sponsoring LifeSmarts in Michigan was a thrill a minute," exclaimed Melanie Duquesnel, president and CEO of the BBB Serving Eastern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. "We are excited to be involved again this year and look forward to giving Michigan's youth the tools they need to be great consumers throughout their lives."
LifeSmarts topics have been chosen to encourage and reward knowledge in the areas that matter most to consumers and workers in today's marketplace: personal finance; health and safety; the environment; technology; and consumer rights and responsibilities. So far this fall, there are 44 teams representing five Michigan high schools registered to compete online. The competition progresses to a live state play-off at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan on Feb. 17, and then builds to a high-spirited National Championship, which will be held in April in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
School teams can still register to compete at www.lifesmarts.org. The Michigan high schools competing to date include: Carman Ainsworth High School, Cass Tech High School, Davison High School, Fenton High School and Flint Kearsley High School.
"My class was really motivated by the LifeSmarts competition. But more than that, they were really proud every time they competed," said Bruce Burwitz, Business Education Instructor at Fenton High School. "They developed leadership abilities to become better decision-makers and they had fun in the process."
For more information about LifeSmarts visit: http://easternmichigan.bbb.org/lifesmarts/
To test your LifeSmarts, take a sample quiz at http://www.start.lifesmarts.org/ . From there, click on "Daily Quiz" to get started.
