CARMEL VALLEY — What began as an offshoot of Canyon Crest Academy’s Economics Club has grown into a student-led financial literacy program with more than 110 active members, reaching 3,125 students and expanding across the United States and overseas.
CCA students Ian Bates and Tanish Kathir launched the Financial Literacy Initiative, or FLI, to teach younger students the basics of personal finance through in-person lessons that combine instruction, games and other interactive activities.
The Carmel Valley-based organization focuses primarily on students from kindergarten through middle school and has established chapters in Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Wisconsin, Indiana, Texas and New Jersey, along with chapters overseas, according to the students.
“We noticed that a lot of [students and] siblings and a lot of the younger generation weren’t getting [the] exposure (of financial literacy) that’s needed, so we decided to launch the Financial Literacy Initiative,” Kathir said.
Bates and Kathir said they developed the program after researching the effects of financial literacy and how well Americans understand basic financial concepts.
“One of the leading causes of homelessness was a lack of financial literacy,” Bates said, per the National Library of Medicine. “There were many other studies showing that 66% of Americans lack basic financial literacy, and it’s really those types of studies that represent how drastic of a problem financial literacy is as of right now.”
Rather than relying solely on classroom-style lectures, Bates and Kathir combine instruction with games, questions and rewards to keep younger students engaged.
“All our presentations are given in person,” Bates said. “We definitely lecture these students and provide them with lessons directly from us, but at the same time, we mix in games and other interactive activities. So we have questions [asked] throughout, which are rewarded with either gift cards or candy of sorts, and then we also have a game, and that’s in the middle of every single one of our presentations, and it references earlier materials.”
Their lessons focus on basic financial concepts that students can understand and eventually apply, rather than more complicated aspects of investing and personal finance.
“We touch on maybe a basic budgeting plan,” Bates said. “We touch on what the stock market is? What are bonds or retirement accounts? But we really try to take a basic approach because these kids don’t need to know how to individually analyze a stock. They would benefit a lot more just by an overall understanding of what those materials actually are.”
The approach has drawn praise from educators, including Austin Olson, a physical education teacher at Pacific Trails Middle School, who said Bates and Kathir stood out from other high school students who have given presentations to his classes.
“I have had some high school guests before, and they literally read their slides,” Olson said. “[These] guys knew [their] stuff and kept the kids engaged.”
Bates and Kathir have also expanded their efforts beyond Carmel Valley, using social media to grow FLI and establish chapters nationally and internationally.
“We’ve consistently posted on both Instagram and TikTok, leveraging those platforms that help gain traction,” Bates said. “We’ve expanded geographically, so now we have chapters worldwide. We have chapters in London. We have chapters in multiple states across the United States. We have chapters in China.”
The students said they plan to continue expanding FLI both domestically and internationally.
“We want to keep ramping up our geographical expansion,” Bates said. “[And] keep opening up new chapters.”
For Bates and Kathir, being students themselves is also central to the organization’s approach to teaching younger generations about money.
“The fact that we’re students, the fact that we’ve gone through the same hardships that we’re talking about in the presentation makes it such a compelling story,” Kathir said.
