Contact elementary schools in your target markets to learn how you might volunteer in classrooms. If your store budget and schedule allow, encourage your staff to spend one to two paid hours each month volunteering to help as well.
Tell each school principal or volunteer coordinator that you're especially interested in educating children to be smarter consumers. But be equally clear that you won't use the volunteering to try to persuade the children to get people to shop at your store. You might need to prove your good intentions by tutoring students in areas having nothing to do directly with consumer issues, at least at the start. In this case, aim towards assisting with math lessons. That's because many elementary school math lessons have to do with money, buying, and selling.
You and your staff are also in a good position to work with students who are learning critical thinking skills in reading, science, and social studies curricula. It's in the long-term interest of your business to have customers who can recognize true value. Consumer psychology research says that by the time children are in elementary school, most are able to identify what is an advertisement. But especially in the lower grades, they're not so good at realizing the intent of an ad is often to persuade the child to act impulsively and become bored with what they currently own.
Publicize the ways in which your store is helping in the schools, but be sure to do this in a way that highlights the service aspects rather than leaving people with the impression that you're doing it only to build business. For instance, when you send out press releases, say that you hope your volunteering will inspire other businesses and citizens to join your staff by volunteering in the schools.
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