Kevon Chisolm and his 17-year-old son, Kamari, are the founders of Junior Wallstreeters, Inc., a Black-owned non-profit that is very excited to offer online summer camps for young people for the seventh consecutive year. The camps are great for preventing learning loss and offer fun environments for students to learn wealth building concepts with other like minded students.

The camps, Junior WallStreeters: Empowering Youth with Financial Wellness, will teach students life-long financial education skills and discipline through 10 lessons with an emphasis on African American history and culture. Chisolm, executive director of Junior Wallstreeters, Inc states: “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.” Chisolm states, “our goal is to teach financial education to address the racial 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. Chisolm believes that one way African Americans and Latinos can address this disparity is by becoming more financially literate at an early age. Hence, 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 2) Introduction to Real Estate Investing. The financial literacy and investing session is a prerequisite for these advanced sessions. The Financial Literacy and Investing Camp will be held virtually every two weeks for six weeks between June 24th-July 19th, from 10am to 3:30pm EST with a 1 hour lunch break.

The Introduction to Cryptocurrency will be held from July 8th-12th from 10:30am to 3:30pm EST. The Introduction to Real Estate Camp will be held July 15th to July 19th from 10:30am to 3:30pm EST. Each student that registers for the Introduction to Cryptocurrency will receive cryptocurrency upon the completion of the camp.

Students must be between the ages of 12-21 and have a computer with Internet access. The cost of the two week camp sessions are 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. Chisolm asserts: “we want to give as many students the opportunity to obtain a financial education regardless of their parent’s financial situation.” More donations are needed to support the interested students. Those that are interested in supporting us, can sponsor a camper or make a donation at https://donorbox.org/empowering-youth-with-financial-wellness

Families that are interested in obtaining a need based scholarship to attend the camp, should visit our website for the scholarship application. Since Junior Wallstreeters have already received a donation from a Pittsburgh resident to sponsor five campers, interested Pittsburgh parents should complete the scholarship application immediately.

Limited spaces available. You can register for all the sessions at: JuniorWallStreeters.org/register.