Financial Foundations is a free financial literacy program for middle schoolers: budgeting, saving, credit, loans, investing, and spotting a scam. Trained and licensed high school students teach it at schools and community sites 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.
By the time most people learn how credit works, they already have some. Seventh grade is early enough to get there first, and old enough for the ideas to stick.
Complete training, get licensed, bring the program to a middle school or club near you. You'll learn credit, investing, and loans well enough to explain them to a room of twelve-year-olds, which is harder than it sounds.
How to become a teacherA licensed teacher brings everything: curriculum, materials, handouts, surveys. You provide a room and your usual supervision. Ten weeks later you have a group of kids who know what a credit score is.
What hosting involvesIt's the first rule of the program, and every teacher signs it.
Every session is a short lesson, a hands-on activity, and a "What would you do?" scenario the group talks through. Nothing is graded. No one is asked about their own family's money.
Financial Foundations licenses individual high school students, not clubs or schools. You complete training, sign a license with a parent or guardian, arrange a host site, and run the program yourself. The Foundation gives you everything except the room and the kids.
Name, school, grade, and a parent or guardian's email. Takes two minutes.
Six short online modules and a live practice run of Session 1 with a reviewer.
You and your guardian sign the Teacher License Agreement online. Your license number unlocks the materials.
Get a school or site's signed approval, upload it, and Session 1 unlocks. Each session unlocks as you log the last.
Middle schools, YMCAs, libraries, after-school programs, and clubs host Financial Foundations by approving a licensed high school teacher to run it on their premises, under their own policies, the way they'd host any student-led activity.
No. The approval form is between your site and the teacher. The Foundation provides curriculum and training, and it is not a party to your arrangement.
Your site, under your own policies, exactly as for any student-led activity on your premises. The Foundation does not supervise sessions.
The curriculum is licensed to trained teachers only, but the teacher can walk your staff through Session 1 in full before you commit.
No. No products, no companies, no personal financial advice. Sessions teach general concepts.
Tell the teacher or email the Foundation. You can stop hosting at any time, and the Foundation can revoke a teacher's license at any time.
The license requires the full sequence. Sessions can be spread across a semester if weekly doesn't fit.
Every group takes the same short, anonymous survey at the first and last session. Teachers log every session. The numbers below come from that, not from anyone's impression.
Six quick knowledge questions (what a credit score is, what happens to a loan over time, what to do with a suspicious text) and four confidence questions, scored 1 to 5. No names, ever. A code matches a student's first survey to their last.
Results are reported only in aggregate. If a number isn't on this page yet, it's because we haven't collected enough to say it honestly.
Quotes from students, teachers, and host sites will appear here as consent forms allow.
Questions about teaching, hosting, or the program itself.
Already licensed? Everything lives in the teacher portal.
Financial Foundations is a program of The RiseSingh Foundation, a California 501(c)(3). To support the program, give through the Foundation and note Financial Foundations.