This 2019-2020 school year the Keeping It Real program came back for their annual visit. This was their 7th year organizing this program with Montevallo High School. Keeping It Real focuses on informing and preparing students for different responsibilities that they will need to learn when they graduate high school, for example, managing finances, being on time for work, and how to be a good business leader. This program shows students real life situations and how important it is to know how to manage your money well. On the first day the business leaders that run the program went around the classes explaining what the program was about and what they would be doing. The students were each given different life situations and some time type of financial money. They had different stations where they would go to spend on their basic needs like insurance, clothes, groceries, and more. At the end, each student hopefully had some money left or maybe none at all. Overall, this was an amazing and extremely helpful experience for the students.  

Business leader and entrepreneur Kirk Mancer, who works with the program said, “I think this is an amazing program. This program exposes students to many different opportunities to learn about how to handle finances, insurance, and other important things you will need in life. This program is especially helpful because you all are the future employees and future business owners of America.”

Current freshman, Rafael Perez participated in the program and said, “I think this program is really helpful because it is useful to know all of these things and it is definitely good to have experienced this for when we get out of highschool so we can be prepared and know what is to come.”