By Tihut Tamrat, Contributing Writer
On Saturday, June 15, The Boulé, the oldest fraternity for African Americans, hosted an Economic Empowerment Summit for teens and college students at San Diego City College. This event featured engaging financial education workshops and inspiring mentor sessions, access to youth-focused financial resources and informative panel discussions, exciting networking and resource fair and music by DJ, empowering and inspiring keynote speakers, and complimentary food and beverages sponsored by Raising Cane’s.
To begin, Ricky Shabazz, President of San Diego City College opened the summit by voicing just how important it is to take advantage of free college classes offered in high school for free to jump start their college for free. “Now when we go to these classes that we offer for free, guess what we don’t see? I don’t see black students and now so these other students are taking these classes for free. And you can do that right now,” states Shabazz.
Following Shabazz, Keynote speaker, Ramsey Jay, Jr. Founding Principal of Ramsey Jay, Jr. and Associates, gave a silver-tongued speech about how important it is to first understand the language of finance as to become literate in finance to accrue wealth. “Money is a language, if you don’t understand the language of money you will become an economic slave or beholden to somebody that does,” conveys Jay.
After learning why it’s important to become financially literate now, the workshop portion of the summit began. Workshops on credit, budgeting, financial education, parent responsible adult exchange and more were held in classrooms. There students were engaged and able to ask many questions as financial resources were provided to them by representatives from East Chop Capital, UC San Diego Admissions, San Diego Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Inc, Concerned Parents Alliance College Bound Academy Programs, and more.
Succeeding these activating sessions, Raising Cane’s was there to compliment. This summit provided many informative discussions, tips and tricks to becoming financially literate, and offered many ways to bank on our legacy!
