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Unified Leaders Helping Scouts to Be Prepared

Thursday, February 15, 2024

The Boy Scout motto is “Be Prepared,” a local bank has a team teaching precisely that. Unified Bank lenders Michael Goclan and Stacy Carpino are helping area Scouts (boys and girls) prepare for their futures by offering financial literacy training to allow the Scouts to earn their Personal Management Merit Badges. 
Merit badges are designed to allow Scouts to learn and understand subjects to help them determine if they would like to pursue them further as a career or vocation. They also give Scouts a basic understanding of subjects as life lessons to further their personal development. There are 135 merit badges in the Scouting BSA education system.

Goclan and Carpino will be offering merit badge training for the coveted Scout’s Personal Merit Badge, a badge designed to train Scouts on how to map out a plan for life that includes short and long-range goals and ways to reach those goals. Goclan, an Eagle Scout and father of two Eagle Scout sons, said he believes today’s youth face difficult financial decisions that will best be made with early education and an understanding of money, credit, savings, and financial planning.

“It’s important that young people enter adulthood with a firm understanding of finances and how bank accounts work and can help them,” said Goclan. Adding, “I’m grateful Unified Bank and Scouting can come together to allow me to help our future leaders learn and grow financially.”

Goclan’s Personal Management Merit Badge workshops will be held at Belmont College on February 17 from 12:15 until 2:00 and March 23 from 12:30 until 2:30, with a final session and lunch being held on April 13 at Unified Bank in Martins Ferry. The workshops are available to all qualifying Scouts. Those interested in attending may contact the Boy Scouts of America Ohio River Council at 304-277-2660.

Unified Bank is a full-service Member FDIC-insured, state-chartered commercial bank headquartered in Martins Ferry, OH and has eighteen locations that serve the Ohio counties of Athens, Belmont, Carroll, Fairfield, Harrison, Hocking, Jefferson and Tuscarawas and Marshall County in West Virginia. Unified Bank is the sole operating subsidiary of United Bancorp, Inc. (UBCP), a publicly-traded bank holding company, and has been serving the financial needs of the Ohio Valley since 1902 from its headquarters in Martins Ferry, Ohio.