Seedlyng Financial Education

The old saying is that “money makes the world go round,” and many citizens around the world are not getting their piece of the pie due to their lack of financial education. Many also suffer from generational ignorance when it comes to financial literacy, and this has to stop if we are ever to help improve the lives of everyone around the world.

Seedlyng Financial Literacy is the solution to this problem. Our technology products meet our customers where they are mentally, and emotionally. We stress emotionally also because spending habits are based on emotional needs and want also. Our ultimate goal is to CHANGE the mindsets of ALL of our customers and teach them to be financially savvy.

We provide students with personalized, relatable content and help teachers by taking the fear out of teaching finance through ‘just-in-time’ professional development.

We have partnered with Microsoft, the Stash Investment App, Learn & Earn, and Centsai Education to ensure our students have access to all the best financial education possible.

Financial literacy should be a part of every school district’s curriculum. Unfortunately, only 17% of districts offer financial education in the U.S. This is a major problem! The old saying is that “money makes the world go round,” and many Americans are not getting their piece of the pie due to their lack of financial education. 

Many Americans suffer from generational ignorance when it comes to financial literacy, and this has to stop if we are ever to make America into what our forefathers dreamed it would be. 

During the 2020-2021 school year we launched our first pilots with schools in Texas, Chicago, Idaho, and Lebanon in the Middle East. We received very positive feedback and we are expanding our customer base to 27 schools in the fall for the 2021-2022 school year. 

We provide students with personalized, relatable content and help teachers by taking the fear out of teaching finance through ‘just-in-time’ professional development.

Our solution includes our: 

?? Our award-winning app

??‍? Virtual/In-person workshops

? Year-long curriculum

? Teacher LMS Dashboard

➕ Investing Simulator powered by STASH

In 2020 we helped over 1250 students, trained 40 plus teachers, at 5 different schools. Our paying customer base also includes Nye County in Nevada, the Boys and Girls Club in Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Michael Finley Foundation.

Our target population is low-income schools and nonprofits that support communities in need. Our motto is "Mission Over Money" and we try our best to work within the budget of the institutions we serve.

Our current projects include: 

• 5 Lebanon Schools in the Middle East (1250 students) via the US Embassy
• Middle & high schools (Richardson ISD, Plato Learning Academy)
• 2 non-profits (Twin Falls Boys & Girls Club, The Michael Finley Foundation, Edenma Homeless Shelter)

-Working with the schools in Lebanon has been an amazing experience for our team. We partnered with a STEM program that was in need of a financial literacy solution to earn a grant from the US Embassy. 

We have trained over 40 teachers, at 5 different schools, and over 1,250 students. We worked with the teachers to provide creative lesson plans based on their local culture, data analysis based on student content mastery, and also helped support teachers throughout the school year. The student feedback has been very positive, for example, they even said they are enjoying it more than the STEM content.

-In the US we are able to incorporate our partners like the STASH Investment App, and the Learn & Earn App from the creators of Acorns. These partners are very beneficial to our students because it gives our students the ability to apply what they are learning in a safe environment and gives them the chance to earn real money that can be cashed out when they are older.

Our entire business exists to equip everyone with the financial knowledge they need to make wise decisions with the money they earn. 

We target low-income communities because these are the communities that need our support the most. 

We do this by first assessing our students' current level of financial knowledge and then our technology creates a personalized curriculum plan for each user.

We are a FULL-TURN KEY solution for a community, business, school, or nonprofit. 

We have customers that are using our solution. We are ready to grow and expand since last year was mostly pilot offerings, but now we are ready to take on more clients because we have proved that our solution works.

We offer afterschool virtual finance classes. Parents and teachers can sign up their students to attend these classes (Check it out here: Seedlyng After School). 

Winning the prize money will allow us to offer FREE Scholarships to 'People of Color' and take away the stress of paying for our classes. We would also use the money to pay our teachers who are black and brown. 

This is a GREAT opportunity to help teach a new generation how money works to help improve their outcome in life. 

Our technology and program are different from our competitors because we create a personalized experience for our users. For example, each user starts by taking a short assessment in the areas of financial psychology, entrepreneurship, saving, and budgeting. NO ONE is doing this for finance in schools. It is done for reading and math, but financial education isn't personalized.

Our app creates a personalized set of courses based on each students’ individual needs. Teachers benefit from our program because they get access to our year-long curriculum, Learning Management System, and support that includes lesson planning and data analysis.

We have also partnered with Microsoft and have plans in place to create an AI-powered web version of our app that will also allow us to partner with more content creators and finance leaders.

Our award-winning technology is a game-changer for schools and nonprofits. We are different from our competitors because along with our technology, we provide support for the teachers and staff we work with, and you won’t find this with most technology companies.

?? The Plan-It Mobile App & Teacher LMS Dashboard: 

      Available for Android and Apple

??‍? Virtual/In-person workshops:

     The Michael Finley Foundation, Virtual, Summer 2020

We keep our low-to-no income students in mind every step of the way and develop creative ways to ensure they have equal access to our tools. As stated earlier, students can save lessons on their phone during a time they have wi-fi access and view it later when they don't.

Our partner, WTAN also provides SIM cards that can provide internet access to remote spots globally. This partnership will be crucial to our success as we partner with more organizations around the world.

Provide evidence that this technology works. Please cite your sources.

Seedlyng helps teachers and students:

1. Teacher Testimonials:

2. Student Testimonial Video

3. Short App Demo (Not professional Quality...Sorry!)

No risks-We work with schools and students so we don't share any information to ensure we are complying with HIPPA laws.

Current - 2,000

1 Year - 300,000

5 years - 10,000,000

The next year is very important to our success, but the next five years will define us. 

Our goal next year is to continue to impact as many global students as possible. We will expand our partnership in the Middle East by adding more schools and training more teachers and students. We are launching pilots in Tanzania in the fall, and we are collaborating with businesses in the Philippines to create a solution for communities in need of increased financial knowledge. 

While we continue to grow our business, we will also be working in the background to improve our technology via our partnership with Microsoft. We will develop an AI-Powered web version that allows teachers and students to more easily onboard and engage with our platform.

Working with Microsoft will also give us access to their portfolio of over 3,600 schools around the world, and their team of over 40,000 sales representatives. 

In the next five years, Seedlyng will be the global go-to organization for financial education for schools and nonprofits because we are meeting our users where they are mentally, financially, and emotionally and helping them grow. 

We currently track how many students and teachers we are able to support. We monitor student growth and engagement on our platform. 

Teachers provide feedback on the usage of our tools, and students inform us about how much they did or didn't like the content.

These are important metrics for us to track because if students are bored they won't want to learn. If they are learning then their financial knowledge base is growing and they will grow to make wiser decisions. 

1. Derrick Wesley, CEO

2. Richard Ciarletta, COO

3. Ethan Robson, Campus Director

We are a group of educators that saw that the current system is broken, and we decided to do something about it. I'm Derrick Wesley, the CEO, and founder. I have over 9 years of classroom experience, I won TD Ameritrade's Innovation Contest and I am continuing to push my own personal limits to reach my goals.

Our COO, Richard Ciarletta, is also a former educator and school principal. Richard has also served as an edtech consultant and sales rep. Rich and I taught together at my first campus and our time together helped inspire the creation of Seedlyng.
Ethan Robson is our Campus Director, his job is to work with the students on campus and create a finance club to help share financial knowledge with the campus and community. Ethan and I worked together as co-teachers in a low-income, underserved school in Richardson, TX. 

We work well together because we have worked with students, teachers, and administrators together in the school system, and now we are just changing our roles a little. This gives us an advantage because our education partners view us as one of them because we are!

We are a truly diverse and unique team.

1. Derrick Wesley, African American

2. Richard Ciarletta, Jewish

3. Ethan Robson, Caucasian

Our philosophy on diversity is based on our experience as educators. We can't choose the students who arrive in our classroom, and we don't judge them when they do arrive. We enjoy working with individuals who believe in our motto, "Mission Over Money."

Seedlyng Financial Education is applying to Solve because we believe that your organization can help us expand our global outreach efforts.

We are especially interested in connecting with your network of former Solvers and learning from their knowledge and experience. 

Yes, we are a team of educators, but we also understand how important it is to be a learner and admit when you don't know something, and we have accomplished a lot but we still have a lot to learn. 

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We believe the following companies can help us achieve our company goals and have the global impact we plan to have:

1. Global Phone Carriers - Partnering with mobile phone companies will allow us to provide low-income families and underserved communities get access to phones and tablets so they can use our products at home, work, or on the go.

2. Banks like Capital One - We would love to partner with banks because once our students learn from us they will need a trusted partner that can help them apply their newfound skills by managing a checking, savings, and/or investment portfolio.

3. Expand our Microsoft Partnership - We would like to work with Microsoft to develop our web version and incorporate their Project Cortex AI program to create a better personalized financial literacy curriculum for our users.

4. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation