Kevon Chisolm and his 16-year-old son, Kamari, the founders of Junior Wallstreeters, Inc. a non-profit, are offering online summer camps for children for the fourth year in a row. Their camps are great for preventing learning loss and offer fun environments for students to learn wealth-building concepts with other like-minded students.

The course is called Junior WallStreeters: Empowering Youth with Financial Wellness and will teach students lifelong financial education skills and discipline through 10 lessons with an emphasis on African American history and culture.

Kevon comments, “In addition to topics like budgeting, banking, and investing in the stock market, our camp goes beyond others by exploring community wealth building through investment clubs.”

He adds, “Our goal is to teach financial education to address the wealth gap by showing young people how to properly use money as a tool.”

Recent calculations by Federal Reserve data, show only 34% of African American households owned any stocks and 24% of Latino households owned any stocks, while 61% of white households did.

Kevon and Kamari believe that one way African Americans and Latinos can address this disparity is by becoming more financially literate at an early age. These camps are not only for African Americans but all underserved communities.

One child that participated last summer wrote:
I absolutely loved the Financial Literacy Program with Mr. Chisolm and Ms. Goslee. It has given me some experience with the stock market and showed me new things that will help me as I become an adult. This class is perfect for kids and teens. It teaches you not only about the stock market, but also about African American history, credit and debit cards, and insurance. As someone who never got the chance to learn about insurance in a regular school setting, this made a big impact on me. I look forward to doing more classes like this in the future.

In addition to the basic financial literacy camp from the last two summers, Junior Wallstreeters is offering the following: 1) Introduction to Cryptocurrency and NFTs; and 2) Advanced Stock Analysis and Advanced Investment Clubs. The financial literacy and investing session is a prerequisite for these advanced sessions.

The schedule for summer 2023:

The Financial Literacy and Investing Camp will be held virtually every two weeks for six weeks between June 26th-August 4th, from 10:30am-3:30pm EST with a 1-hour lunch break. The Introduction to Cryptocurrency will be held from July 10th-14th from 10:30-3:30pm EST. The Advanced Stock Analysis and Advanced Investment Clubs Camps will be held July 24th to August 4th from 10:30am-3:30pm EST. Each student that registers for the Introduction to Cryptocurrency and Advanced Stock Analysis summer camps will receive cryptocurrency and a gift card to purchase shares in a company.

Students must be between the ages of 12-21 and have a computer with Internet access. The cost of the two-week camp sessions is from $300 to $325. This fee includes an electronic student handbook and daily course access. Junior Wallstreeters have secured several scholarships for underserved students to attend the financial literacy and investing camps.

Kevon asserts: “We want to give as many students the opportunity to obtain a financial education regardless of their parent’s financial situation.” Families interested in obtaining a scholarship to attend the camp should visit the official website for the scholarship application.

Those that are interested in supporting the cause can sponsor a camper or make a donation at: https://donorbox.org/empowering-youth-with-financial-wellness

How to Register:
Limited spaces are available. You can register for all the sessions at https://form.jotform.com/230357645412150

(Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in Black News.)