Shortly after the start of the semester, one of Dan Kahn’s students came to say goodbye. Her father had kicked her out of the house over a missing $30 that she’d given to a friend. Stuck between returning to her father’s home—after he beat her for the indiscretion—and moving into her mother’s house with nine siblings in the ailing Fairfield neighborhood, she chose to make the move.
Without a job and a car, she had no way to get to and from Belaire High School. Instead, she’d be forced to switch to arguably one of the city’s lowest-performing high schools. What she needed was the financial independence that would allow her to make positive changes in her own life.
That’s when Kahn saw the need to empower Baton Rouge youth with things most adults take for granted, things like having a checking account to deposit a paycheck from a job and the chance to save for emergencies. Having focused on a broad range of social and economic studies at Harvard University, Kahn knew that financial empowerment could help spur social change.
And he knew that making a literal investment in the future of the Baton Rouge youth would create the emotional, intellectual and financial capital that teens need to create and shape their own brighter future.
“You have to have the ability to cope with what life throws you,” Kahn says. “You have to have the ability to deal with it if your parents are treating you poorly, if you are getting yelled at in the streets.”
Being financially capable is a big part of that equation. That’s why Kahn and a small group of Teach for America members started the Baton Rouge Youth Coalition, which is committed to “mobilizing the resources that these teens need, and getting them in the drivers’ seats of their future,” Kahn says. “I believe as a base line, they have to understand how financial literacy works. I tell them that money is a much bigger thing than just the bling.
“It has become my mission to spread this sort of financial literacy gospel. I want to help teens get financially literate.”
Age: 26
If you could have any job other than your own, what would it be?
“If it could pay me a sustainable salary, I’d want to be the full-time executive director of BRYC.”
Click here for the complete list of 2008's Forty Under 40 winners.
Comments
Posted by rizzojeanne on November 22, 2008 at 9:23 p.m. (Suggest removal)
This is one amazing young man! It is precisely this kind of innovative, compassionate thinking that will change the world. I hope that his organization thrives and that philanthropic visionaries see the need and value of his work.
Jeanne Rizzo
Posted by EdIsrael on November 23, 2008 at 5:14 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Daniel, you are a rare bird in this world of mine, mine. Congratulations to you!!
Ed
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