City National Bank Collects Supplies for Elementary Schools in 5 States

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 1, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- City National Bank today announced that with the help of its colleagues the bank collected a record of more than 36,000 school supplies for its 3rd Annual Back-to-School Supplies Drive held last month. The bank donated these school supplies to a record number 24 elementary schools and a nonprofit group in California, Nevada, New York, Tennessee and Georgia.

As part of this year's school supplies drive, bank colleagues also took part in teaching its Dollars + $ense financial literacy program to students at the schools it donated supplies. The bank started this program several years ago as an enhancement to its award-winning Reading is The Way Up literacy program. The Dollars+$ense program is for grades K-12 and teaches age appropriate information about banking and finance.

Started three years ago by a number of caring colleagues in the Banking and Investment Services area of the bank, the School Supplies Drive now includes colleagues in five states who donate to this worthy cause. This year's record number of school supplies surpassed last year's donations by more than 8,000 items, "which is a real testament of the caring attitude City National colleagues have for their communities," said Richard Shier, executive vice president and manager of Banking & Investment Services for City National.

"The importance of a child coming to school adequately equipped cannot be overstated," Shier added. "With state budgets strained to the limit, and more children than ever in need, we hope that each donation distributed will make a world of difference in the futures of the students in our communities."

The school supplies collected and donated this year included erasers, highlighters, round-tip scissors, packs of wide ruled paper, colored pencils, folders, notebooks, pencil sharpeners, rulers, boxes of crayons, glue sticks, #2 pencils, three-ring binders, and more. In addition to these supplies, bank colleagues donated countless hours of their time packaging and delivering these supplies to the various schools, along with teaching the Dollars+$ense financial literacy program to hundreds of students.