Hoping to help fill the ever-growing wealth gap at the local level, 100 Black Men of Baton Rouge is targeting area high school students, and specifically young blacks, with a new financial literacy program called Dollars and Sense.
As Business Report details in a feature from the current issue, financial professionals volunteer their expertise to provide high school students of color with the tools they need. The free program is held in the spring over eight to 10 weeks at Southern University. For three hours each Sunday, students learn about checking and savings accounts, asset allocations, how to read The Wall Street Journal, and differences between growth stocks and value stocks, mutual funds and bond portfolios, among other topics.
Structured like a three-hour college course, the class is intensive and time consuming; but when it’s all over, Lorin Crenshaw says, the participants are more financially literate than most adults. Crenshaw, vice president and treasurer of investor relations at Albemarle Corp., leads the local program, which is operated on a national scale by other 100 Black Men chapters across the country.
“I tell them about my life story,” says Melvin Chambers, who helped Crenshaw start the initiative. “I grew up poor, and I’m blessed now. It was all about how I spent my money.”
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