Financial Foundations is a free, ten-session financial literacy program for students in grades six through eight. It covers the fundamentals that most people are never formally taught: earning, budgeting, saving, banking, credit, borrowing, investing, and recognizing fraud. The program is delivered by trained and licensed high school students at schools and community organizations across Southern California.
Jordan gets $40 for their birthday. They want a $35 game today. But their bike tire is flat, and a new tube costs $12.
Most people first encounter credit, loans, and financial decisions in their late teens, often before anyone has explained how they work. Middle school is early enough to introduce these ideas before they carry real consequences, and late enough that students can understand and retain them.
High school students who complete the program's training and sign a license agreement can bring Financial Foundations to a middle school, club, or community site in their area. Teachers receive the full curriculum, a materials kit, and ongoing support from the Foundation, and they gain the kind of understanding that only comes from explaining a subject to others.
How to become a teacherSchools and community organizations host the program by approving a licensed teacher to run it on their premises. The teacher provides the curriculum, materials, and surveys; the site provides a room and applies its usual supervision policies. There is no cost to the site, the students, or their families.
What hosting involvesThis is the first rule of the program. Every teacher agrees to it as a condition of their license, and every session is built so that it holds.
The program consists of ten sessions of about forty minutes each. Every session introduces one core idea through a short lesson, a hands-on group activity, and a "What would you do?" scenario that students discuss together. Nothing is graded, there is no homework, and no student is asked about their own family's finances.
Financial Foundations licenses individual high school students rather than clubs or schools. Each teacher completes the training, signs a license agreement together with a parent or guardian, arranges a host site, and delivers the program. The Foundation provides the curriculum, materials, training, and support; the teacher provides the initiative and the time.
Provide your name, school, grade, and a parent or guardian's email address. The application takes about two minutes.
Watch four short training videos, about twenty minutes in total, followed by a brief check of what you have learned.
You and your parent or guardian sign the Teacher License Agreement online. Once signed, your license number gives you access to the curriculum.
Obtain a signed approval form from a school or community site and upload it. Your first session becomes available, and each subsequent session is released as you log the previous one.
Apply in the teacher portalRead the license summaryQuestions first
Middle schools, community centers, libraries, after-school programs, and youth clubs host Financial Foundations by approving a licensed high school teacher to deliver the program on their premises. The site applies its own policies, in the same way it would for any student-led activity, and the program runs for ten weekly sessions at no cost.
No. The approval form is an agreement between your site and the teacher. The Foundation provides the curriculum and training but is not a party to the hosting arrangement.
Your site does, under its own policies, exactly as it would for any student-led activity on its premises. The Foundation does not supervise sessions.
The curriculum is licensed to trained teachers only. However, the teacher can walk your staff through the first session in full before you decide.
No. The program does not name products or companies and does not offer personal financial advice. Sessions teach general concepts only.
Speak with the teacher or contact the Foundation directly. A site may stop hosting at any time, and the Foundation may revoke a teacher's license at any time.
The license requires the full ten-session sequence. If a weekly schedule does not suit your site, the sessions can be spread across a semester.
Every group completes the same short, anonymous survey at the first and last session, and teachers log every session they deliver. The figures below are drawn from that data.
Figures for the number of host sites, licensed teachers, and average knowledge gain will be published here once the first licensed cycles are complete and the survey data has been reviewed.
The survey consists of six short knowledge questions, covering topics such as what a credit score is, how a loan grows over time, and how to respond to a suspicious message, along with four questions about confidence, each scored from one to five. Students never provide their names; a simple code links each student's first survey to their last.
Results are reported only in aggregate. Where a figure does not yet appear on this page, it is because we have not collected enough data to report it with confidence.
Comments from students, teachers, and host sites will be added here as consent permits.
We welcome questions about teaching, hosting, or the program itself.
Licensed teachers can find everything they need in the teacher portal.
Financial Foundations is a program of The RiseSingh Foundation, a California 501(c)(3). To support the program, donate through the Foundation and designate your gift to Financial Foundations.