Socioeconomic Empowerment though Youth

Youthful Savings works extensively on disrupting the growing income inequality in the world through the power of empowered youth.

The impact of the of the Covid-19 pandemic is that the world's poorest have gotten poorer and are losing purchasing power at a rapid rate. As a result, there has been a substantial increase in global poverty, at all poverty lines. It is estimated that 97 million more people are living on less than $1.90 a day in 2021 because of the pandemic[1].

Currently, the world's youth population (24 years and younger) consists of 42% of the world's population. If this population can transact with more empathy and kindness (no mater what social class they currently belong in), the rising inequality created by our political, business and banking systems can be solved. It will take heart based education tools that are rooted in socioeconomic development.

Youthful Savings believes that socioeconomic empowerment of youth through kind capitalism and bottom-up economics is a solution to the cycle of poverty. Social and economic factors have historically created the current income inequality that exists in every nation in our world. When income inequality reaches a tipping point, social unrest ensues. Our current political, business, and banking systems are causing the wealth gap to increase at alarming rates. Education can be the great equalizer and our goal at Youthful Savings is to make that theory come true!

Poverty is defined as a state or condition in which a person or community lacks the financial resources and essentials for a minimum standard of living.[2]We would also like to introduce the concept of poverty of heart. We define this as the inability to provide for others or have empathy for the concerns of others. This is further aggravated by the need to hoard material goods or wealth. The combination of actual poverty and poverty of heart is the cause for social unrest and a human experience that lacks peace. Simply put, world peace can be achieved if poverty - both actual and of heart - are eliminated. We believe that socioeconomic empowerment education can solve poverty. An education ecosystem must include both economic knowledge and character development education that increases heart intelligence. Each youth has the ability to undo the harms of the past generations and create a kinder and more inclusive economy and thus society.

The core of our ethos is a shift from nationalistic and competitive economic systems to a more global and inclusive system. By reaching the hearts and minds of the youth, we believe we can rebuild the human experience to include the 3c’s: Compassion, Collaboration and Contribution. All youth in our learning ecosystem are guided to increase their 3c’s. This is a major shift from the current competitive markets that are driving our global economics; however, one youth at a time, we are seeing a tangible shift in our youth and thus a shift in the future of our world. The youth are the future and investing in the youth will yield to a more peaceful and inclusive society.

[1]: https://blogs.worldbank.org/de...

[2]: https://www.investopedia.com/t...

For close to a decade, Youthful Savings has been teaching financial education and entrepreneurship skills to poverty-stricken youth in the United States. Over the years, we have expanded our learning ecosystem to include the following:

The Learning Marketplace (TLM) was created in 2018 with a mission to rebuild an education system that allows anyone having something to teach to partake in the education economy. Competition in education is not needed and a platform that is collaborative could also help create a more collaborative society and thus reinforce the 3c’s. Furthermore, our history books are written by the victors of the many wars we have had, and it was time for an education platform to allow everyone to write their history and share with the world’s youth. All learning exercises are created to be experiential and include reflection-based learning. TLM is committed to integrative learning as a way to create more empathetic problem solvers. More information about our learning exercises and education methodology can be found HERE.

Subscriptions are priced to fit any budget and scholarships are available through our foundation. Our mission is vast and TLM is meant to create a truly democratic system of education.

Youthful Savings Marketplace (YSM) was created in 2020 as a way to provide experiential learning to youth during the pandemic for our most popular program - My Own Business Challenge. For close to a decade, we have been helping youth start businesses as a way to understand how to transact with each other and learn to earn and save money from their own personal gifts. We realized that it was necessary to build a community of youth as a way to combat the isolation that was occurring from the pandemic and forced home schooling. 

YSM charges a transaction fee for each youth sale. 10% of the fee goes to fund the Youthful Savings Foundation which in turn funds more youth businesses. The youth are creating a kinder and more inclusive capitalizing system through their ingenuity and hard work. Furthermore, YSM increases city, state, and national gross domestic product and provides sales tax revenue to the communities that the youth are a part of. Investing in the youth yields immense benefits to the world at large – one youth transaction at a time.

Youthful Savings Foundation (YSF) was created in 2018 originally as a private foundation with the sole goal of capitalizing youth owned businesses. The current banking system makes it nearly impossible for historically underserved youth to receive funding in order to increase their current economic status. YSF’s goal is to supplement the banks and provide youth necessary capital for their businesses. In 2019, the IRS reached out and wanted us to turn YSF into a 501c3 public charity. We took this as a gift and wanted to stay true to our values so we decided that YSF would create an open accounting sheet. This can be found HERE. Anyone can help expand the mission of supplementing the banks by making a tax-deductible contribution.

We call our ecosystem an application of kind capitalism through bottom up economics. If we all invest in the youth, the systems we all operate in can become kinder and more inclusive. 

Our ecosystem is meant to serve all those that are directly affected by war and poverty. Historically our modern banking system has profited from war and related geopolitical strategy that allows war and poverty to occur. By instilling a bottom up approach through youth, we believe we can uplift humanity by uniting all youth to truly understand how best to create from a place of compassion, collaboration and contribution.

Our solution provides necessary socioeconomic development education and a platform for youth to unite through the power of kind and sincere business. We define socioeconomic development through our metrics below:

Our Metrics: We measure socioeconomic empowerment by three categories: mental well-being, economic empowerment, and community development. We then further break down the categories into the following sub-metrics:

Metrics

Mental Well-Being

Personal mental health

Personal agency

Personal safety

Economic Empowerment

Personal income

Personal savings

Ability to create and sustain a business

Community Development

Sense of belonging

Getting involved in the local community

Ease in making friends in the local community

In short, our pre and post assessment tests with youth prove that our metrics work and that we are empowering communities through the power of empowered youth.

More information about our work can be found on our white paper HERE.

Our team has a deep understanding of the trauma that war and poverty can cause. All of our core team members from a migrant background (due to displacement from war). We are acutely aware and empathetic to what the term historically underserved really means. It's beyond just race but more about the root cause of stolen assets. When war occurs, people lose everything and are forced to move. They must begin anew. The pandemic has just shown light to the human tragedy that can occur when we don't take care of each other. 

Youthful Savings is embedded in uniting the youth to become more productive and empathetic humans that can shift their mindset from us vs. them to we. What can we has the biggest generation yet create for the world in order to make it better for generations to come. Our belief is that our if we guide the youth truthfully and from open hearts, we can totally transform global economics. 

Our biggest need is to grow our brand. We have spent over 8 years, perfecting our ecosystem to truly serve the youth and now we are ready to share our case studies, metrics, technology and value. We believe a partnership with MIT Solve will allow us to reach the globe with our solution to the age old problem - poverty. 

We believe kind capitalism through bottom up economics can eradicate poverty - everywhere. It's a bold statement but we have a proven method that works. By investing in youth at a young age and providing them necessary socioeoncomic skills, youth can learn to create business and learn the financial systems that have historically not included them. 

Our work can be best seen through our proof of work via our white paper.

Goals for the Future (found on our white paper HERE).

Expand Youthful Savings Foundation (YSF): We will continue to fund YSF in order to provide monthly capital contributions. All contributions will be tracked openly per our open accounting policy. More information HERE.

Explore Education through the Metaverse: We are committed to integrating TLM on impactful technology platforms. Google classroom has proven to be the leader in this space; however, we will explore various platforms that are creating education on the metaverse. Our socioeconomic metrics provided in supplemental information below will provide the data points necessary to see if the metaverse can solve long standing challenges in education equity.

Integrate Bitcoin: We have integrated Bitcoin into our ecosystem through a key partnership with OpenNode. More info can be found HERE.

Financial Innovation: Our ecosystem requires various third party financial technology integrations. Youthful Savings would like to build a financial innovation arm in order to lower the financial burden of third party transaction fees. This will further bypass the hurdles that often contribute to the cycle of poverty and democratize finance in order to create economic empowerment for all.

We measure our success through our socioeconomic metrics. Information about these metrics and our results can be found on our white paper HERE.

Our theory of change is best defined on our white paper HERE. Specifically, we were created to change our current top down economic system by including youth.

An excerpt from our white paper can be found below (best defines our theory of change):

Youthful Savings believes that socioeconomic empowerment of youth through kind capitalism and bottom-up economics is a solution to the cycle of poverty. Social and economic factors have historically created the current income inequality that exists in every nation in our world. When income inequality reaches a tipping point, social unrest ensues. Our current political, business, and banking systems are causing the wealth gap to increase at alarming rates. Education can be the great equalizer and our goal at Youthful Savings is to make that theory come true!

Poverty is defined as a state or condition in which a person or community lacks the financial resources and essentials for a minimum standard of living.[1] We would also like to introduce the concept of poverty of heart. We define this as the inability to provide for others or have empathy for the concerns of others. This is further aggravated by the need to hoard material goods or wealth. The combination of actual poverty and poverty of heart is the cause for social unrest and a human experience that lacks peace. Simply put, world peace can be achieved if poverty - both actual and of heart - are eliminated. We believe that socioeconomic empowerment education can solve poverty. An education ecosystem must include both economic knowledge and character development education that increases heart intelligence. Each youth has the ability to undo the harms of the past generations and create a kinder and more inclusive economy and thus society.

The core of our ethos is a shift from nationalistic and competitive economic systems to a more global and inclusive system. By reaching the hearts and minds of the youth, we believe we can rebuild the human experience to include the 3c’s: Compassion, Collaboration and Contribution. All youth in our learning ecosystem are guided to increase their 3c’s. This is a major shift from the current competitive markets that are driving our global economics; however, one youth at a time, we are seeing a tangible shift in our youth and thus a shift in the future of our world. The youth are the future and investing in the youth will yield to a more peaceful and inclusive society.

Our learning platforms and online youth marketplace are built on Wordpress and custom coding. We also have unique financial management web apps that are built on Ruby on Rails technology. We also utilize Google Classroom as a way to create innovate Live Experiences that capture more youth across the world.

Diversity is at the core of who we are at Youthful Savings. We believe in working in different countries with people from different cultures and backgrounds in order to unite the world. Everyone that works at Youthful Savings is dedicated to our culture of inclusivity and service to the youth.

Currently our technology development teams are in India, Australia and the United States. We have shareholders in London, United States and France. We have team members that are from Latin America, Lebanon and United States. We truly value diversity in cultural upbringing. We believe this yields to diversity of thought which ultimately leads to more innovation. Everyone at Youthful Savings is an entrepreneur and works collaboratively to create a better world through youth. By creating a team of people that have the freedom to work where they want and when they want, we are creating a culture of freedom and autonomy. 

The better we are as a team, the better the we can serve the youth. The better the youth, the better the world. More about our values can be found HERE.

We charge a subscription for The Learning Marketplace and we take a small transaction fee on Youthful Savings Marketplace. We typically create one year contracts with reputable organizations as well as governments. However, our learning ecosystem serves and earns from both individuals, organizations and governments. Our ideal contract for TLM is with governments as they typically have the most youth that we can serve. 

We are a highly profitable company (35% after all expenses). Furthermore, we have signed a subscription share agreement with GEMNY. More information about this agreement can found HERE.

We have renewable one year contracts for The Learning Marketplace (TLM) in place with city of Santa Monica, Human Rights First, Children's Aid of New York, and Fresh Air Fund. Each contract varies from $3,000 to $25,000 a year depending on enrollment of youth. Furthermore, we are in talks to offer TLM inside schools in New York City through sponsorship from Capital One Bank as well as the Chicago Urban League which works with Chicago Public Schools.

We also make 8% in transactions fees from our youth owned and operated marketplace - Youthful Savings Marketplace. Youth on our marketplace also contribute 10% of their sales to our foundation in order to capitalize other youth. All of our youth are invited to participate in our monthly sponsored Live Experiences on TLM where youth earn bitcoin for attendance. More information about our unique youth investing in youth theory can be found HERE. 

In short, our business model is profitable but more importantly encompasses a theory of change where citizens of the world can capitalize each other. We call this, "Bottom Up Economics through Kind Capitalism." By uniting the world through the power of youth, we believe the trajectory of the world can transition to one of peace, prosperity for all and a sincere unification of nations. 

Will you invest in Youthful Savings and thus create a better world through the power of youth? We hope so! The better the youth, the better the world!