The numbers don’t lie; Americans have a financial literacy problem. Nearly two-thirds of Americans can’t pass a basic test of financial literacy. Over 53 percent of adults have admitted that thinking about their financial situation makes them anxious, and 44 percent say that discussing their finances is stressful. Currently, 78 percent of American adults live paycheck to paycheck. This is a sign of a big problem, and for younger Americans, this could lead to poor saving, poor spending, excessive credit card use, bad investment decisions, and tax-related issues. Create Every Opportunity (CEO) is a nonprofit that aims to mitigate these problems with its after-school program for high school students.
CEO provides high school students with an after-school program and hybrid learning program that teaches them basic financial literacy and basic knowledge about starting, growing, and maintaining a business. Create Every Opportunity provides lessons from industry leaders that can help students grow their own businesses and expand their knowledge.
CEO also allows students access to a variety of help, such as mentorship programs, counseling services, investment opportunities, internship opportunities, scholarship opportunities, business contests, school incentives, and so much more. The nonprofit holds numerous competitions every year that provide grant money to schools and individual students’ businesses.
Create Every Opportunity has an exclusive crowdfunding platform to help young students fund their dreams. Students can use the private crowdfunding platform to seek investments to start or grow their businesses while people have the opportunity to make donations to fund these growing businesses. CEO was designed to encourage entrepreneurial thinking in the younger generation, even those that don’t think they have the resources to chase their dreams.
The nonprofit’s after-school program is designed to encourage entrepreneurial thinking, expand the financial literacy of high school students, and teach them how to create/start any business. To add credibility to these resources, the nonprofit’s weekly presentations include perspectives from top industry leaders, and each presentation comes with a lesson to provide a resource for the student to refer to.
The organization aims to teach all students the basics of financial literacy while showing them how to apply the same principles to their businesses. Throughout the year, Create Every Opportunity offers students and their schools opportunities to apply for grants, scholarships, and investments to help support entrepreneurial thinking and access to financial literacy for all students—no matter their background or financial situation.
CEO’s large repository of information and resources include exclusive, one-of-a-kind video lessons from industry leaders such as American billionaire John Catsimatidis, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, and many others.
Founder Zachary Saf was inspired to start the nonprofit because of his passion for helping other people. After finding out about America’s financial literacy problem, he knew he had to create a solution to help younger generations from falling into the same trap. Zachary himself is a born businessman, having started his first business when he was a sophomore at Michigan State University.
In the future, Create Every Opportunity aims to work with local and state governments to provide their program to every high school in the country and expand the knowledge of entrepreneurship and financial literacy among younger generations.
Learn more about CEO’s programs on its website.
