Sep 21 – Nov 20, 2026
Empowering Futures, Bridging Gaps

The median white household in America holds ten times the wealth of the median Black household, and eight times that of the median Hispanic household. That figure is from the Brookings Institution.

It is not a story about effort. It is the compound result of decades of unequal access to home financing, credit, investment and inheritance.

And a gap built across generations does not close by itself.

Financial behaviours are largely set by age seven. So that is where we start.

The Carter & Olay Foundation.

Four numbers, and one that changes everything.

Ten times the wealth. Twenty points of difference in adult financial literacy. Three times the child poverty rate. And behaviours largely set by age seven.

Then the fifth: financial education can narrow the gap by up to twenty percent.

That last one is the reason this is a Foundation and not a report. The gap is not fixed. It responds to teaching — and it responds earliest.

Sources: Brookings Institution, FINRA, Annie E. Casey Foundation.

If the numbers are the problem, this is the answer.

We write the books that do not exist yet, with characters children of color recognise as themselves. We teach money as a skill through Marvel’s Money Masters Academy. We work through schools, libraries and community centres that families already trust. And we measure whether any of it worked.

More than 30 communities so far, and thousands of books already in children’s hands.

Swipe through. Then tell us where you think we should be next.

A child’s financial habits are largely set by the age of seven.

Most financial education in this country starts around sixteen.

Nine years is not a scheduling detail. It is the difference between teaching a child how money works and trying to correct what they already believe about it.

We start at six.

I moved house four times in five years as a child. I did not understand why until I was an adult.

I grew up in an underserved part of Washington, D.C., the oldest of four. We had community around us — recreation centres that gave out food and clothes, ran mentoring programmes, kept children off the street. I am still grateful for it.

But nobody taught us about money. Not budgeting, not saving, not credit. Not at school and not at home.

I watched my parents struggle week to week without the language to understand what I was watching.

That is the gap I built this Foundation to close.

— Michael Olaiya, Founder and Executive Director

The community I grew up in gave me a great deal. Food when money ran out. Mentors. A place to be after school that was not the street.

It could not give me the one thing that would have changed what came next.

Nobody taught us about money. It was not in the curriculum and it was not a conversation at home.

A community can carry a family through a hard month. Only education changes what the next generation is able to build.

That is the gap we work in.

— Michael Olaiya, Founder

Founded in 2022. Here is what has happened since.

A properly constituted 501(c)(3) with a working board and an advisory committee. The Wealth Wise Kids Project, developing and publishing financial literacy books written for children of color. Marvel’s Money Masters Academy, teaching money as a skill through workshops, mentors and real business-plan competitions.

More than 30 communities reached. Thousands of books distributed. Measured improvement in financial knowledge among the children who took part.

Four years of building. The next chapter is being written now.

“We had community support. What was missing from my childhood was financial education.”

Our founder grew up in an underserved part of Washington, D.C. as the oldest of four, in a household that moved four times in five years.

The neighbourhood held him. The curriculum did not.

He is now a founding board member and Chairman of PEACE Academy Charter, Atlanta’s first tuition-free public charter school with an Afrocentric curriculum — and the founder of this Foundation.

— Michael Olaiya, Founder and Executive Director

It is World Teachers’ Day, and this is for the teachers who think financial literacy is somebody else’s subject.

You are already teaching it. Every time a child works out change. Every classroom economy, every fundraiser, every group budgeting for a trip. Every time you explain why something is worth waiting for.

You are shaping how a child will one day handle money, whether or not it appears on your curriculum map.

We supply the part that is missing — books your students recognise themselves in, and a structure underneath them.

You are doing the hard part already. Thank you for it.

More than half of young adults aged 18 to 24 say money management is the high-school course that would have helped their lives most. More than any other subject on the list.

That is not a failure of school. You cannot fail a class that was never on the timetable.

And by sixteen it is already remedial. Financial behaviours are largely set by age seven, so a course in the final years is correcting habits formed nearly a decade earlier.

Which is exactly why we work with 6- to 13-year-olds.

Teachers are how this reaches children. If you teach, you are the route.

Pennies & Pages is financial literacy storytime, and it works because it is a story first.

A book read aloud properly, with characters children of color recognise as themselves. Then activities and discussion, so the idea gets used before anybody leaves the room.

Parents stay for it, because a habit reinforced at home outlasts one that only ever existed at a session.

We hold it where families already go — local libraries and community centres. Places that are already trusted and already free.

If you run one, or you would like to read at one, get in touch.

You cannot fail a class that was never on the timetable.

More than half of young adults aged 18 to 24 name money management as the high-school course that would have benefited them most. For most of them, it simply was not offered.

This week we have been saying thank you to teachers. Many of you teach this anyway — in a maths problem, a classroom economy, a trip budget — without it ever appearing on a curriculum map.

Tag one who does.

October is Financial Planning Month, and almost all of it is aimed at adults who are already behind.

Retirement calculators. Debt consolidation. The emergency fund you were supposed to start years ago. Useful, all of it — and all of it repair work.

Nobody schedules a month for the window when it would have been easy.

Financial behaviours are largely set by about age seven. Before most children have held a bank card. Before anyone has said the word budget to them.

We are not against financial planning for adults. We just think somebody should be working the other end of the problem.

Financial behaviours are largely set by about age seven. Here is what is actually forming in those years.

Children copy before they understand. Long before a child can explain what money is, they have watched how the adults around them behave with it — and anxiety and ease are both learned by observation.

They learn what money is for. Spending, keeping, sharing, or worrying about.

They learn whether it can be talked about at all. A child who learns not to ask becomes an adult who does not ask — not at a bank, not about a contract, not about a salary.

And they learn whether waiting is worth it, which is practised rather than inherited.

None of it requires a bank account. Which is why it can start at six, with a story, in a library, for free.

Most money education separates parents and children. The child gets a lesson, the parent gets a leaflet, and nothing changes at home — which is where all the real habits live.

Budget Buddies puts them in the same room, learning the same thing, working through it as a pair.

And parents are never lectured. Many were not taught this either. The workshop is built so nobody has to pretend otherwise.

Everyone leaves with take-home materials, so the conversation continues past the car park.

Quarterly, in community centres, where families already go.

Tomorrow is the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

In the United States, 33% of Black children and 27% of Hispanic children live in poverty. For white children the figure is 11%. That is from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Poverty is not only a shortage of money. It is a shortage of access — to credit, to information, and to the education that unlocks both.

Which is why we treat financial literacy as poverty work, not as an enrichment activity.

The Carter & Olay Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3). Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

The fastest way to lose a ten-year-old is to hand them a chapter.

So Marvel’s Money Masters Academy is built as milestones instead, unlocked one at a time. Budgeting, then saving, then investing, then credit, then starting something of their own.

Each has a name and a character attached, because a milestone a child can picture is a milestone they want to reach.

And at the end, they have not read about money. They have run a budget, compared prices, pitched a business, and stood inside an actual bank.

That is the difference between knowing something and being able to do it.

Marvel’s Money Masters Academy runs on six milestones, unlocked in order.

Captain Cashflow® — budgeting basics.
Penny Protector® — saving savvy.
Invincible Vestment® — investment insight.
The Caped Credit Crusader® — credit confidence.
BizWiz® — entrepreneurial endeavours.
Money Marvel® — financial mastery.

Unlocking today’s financial superheroes, in preparation for tomorrow’s wealth warriors.

Swipe through for what each one covers.

For a lot of our children, the Academy field trip is the first time they have been inside a bank.

Until then a bank is somewhere adults go and come back from worried. Walking in changes what the building means.

They meet someone who works there, ideally someone who looks like them. Representation is not decoration in this programme. It is the point.

Then they pitch — business plans and investment simulations, so what they saw gets used the same week.

Banks, credit unions and local businesses: we would like to bring children to you.

There are three ways a company can back Marvel’s Money Masters Academy, and none of them require a large budget.

Fund a workshop. Host a field trip at your offices. Or send one person for an afternoon to talk to children about what they actually do for a living.

The third costs nothing and is frequently the one a child remembers.

The Carter & Olay Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3). Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Partnership enquiries through the website.

Go and look at the children’s money books in any bookshop, then ask who the hero usually is.

For a long time the answer was: not our children. The characters did not look like them. The neighbourhoods did not look like theirs. The family circumstances were nothing like the ones at home.

A child reading that might still learn the lesson. But they also quietly learn that the subject belongs to somebody else.

So we make the books that did not exist. Same concepts — budgeting, saving, investing, credit — with characters children of color recognise as themselves.

It changes how much of it lands.

People ask what a donation to the Wealth Wise Kids Project actually pays for. This is the pipeline.

Pick a concept a seven-year-old can act on. Build a story rather than a lesson, written with educators and financial literacy specialists. Illustrate it properly, with characters and neighbourhoods our readers recognise.

Then get it into hands through schools, libraries and community centres. Then find out whether it worked, and change it if it did not.

Step three is the one most programmes cut for budget. It is also the one that decides whether a child sees themselves in the book.

The Carter & Olay Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3).

We are asked fairly often what a small donation actually does here. Honest answer: quite a lot, because we are not a large organisation.

A gift of this size is a real line in a real print run. It is books into a classroom. It is the take-home materials that keep a workshop alive after everyone has gone home. It is a free seat at a storytime that is only free because somebody funded it.

Give once, or give monthly. Monthly is what lets us plan a print run rather than hope for one.

The Carter & Olay Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3). Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Today is World Savings Day.

Saving is not a personality trait, and children are not born with or without it. It is a habit. It is practised. And it is far easier to build at six than to repair at thirty.

That is not a small distinction. It is the difference between telling an adult they should have saved and giving a child the chance to learn how.

Teach one child one saving habit today. That is the whole ask.

A nonprofit that parachutes into a community and leaves is worse than one that never came at all.

So everything we run goes through an organisation that is already there. A school, a library, a community centre, a local partner families already trust.

They know who needs it. They know which evening actually works. They will still be there in a year.

It is slower than running our own events with our own logo on them, and it reaches fewer people in the first month.

It also means what we start does not stop the day a funding cycle ends.

Five ways to work with us, and only two of them involve money.

Host a session, if you run a school, library or community centre — you already have the room, the families and the trust.

Send one person for an afternoon. Children remember meeting a banker or a business owner far longer than they remember a worksheet.

Open your doors for a field trip. Sponsor a programme. Or simply match what your employees already give.

The Carter & Olay Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3). Start a conversation through the website.

“The children enjoyed it” is not evidence. So here is how we actually know.

We assess financial knowledge before and after a programme, so improvement is measured rather than assumed. We ask educators and parents, who see what happens in the weeks afterwards. And we ask the children, including what bored them — they are unusually honest reviewers.

Then we change things. Feedback that does not alter the programme is decoration.

So far: more than 30 communities, thousands of books distributed, and measured improvement in financial knowledge among the children who took part.

Funders and grant partners — full evaluation detail available on request.

If you run a school, a library or a community centre, you already have the three hardest things to get.

The room. The families. And the trust, which takes years and cannot be bought by an organisation arriving from outside.

We bring the programme, the books and the materials.

That is the whole partnership. One email starts it.

Financial education teaches children to earn it, save it and grow it. Almost nobody teaches them to give it away.

Which is strange, because generosity is a financial decision like any other. It needs a plan, it has a trade-off, and it can be done well or badly.

A child who gives without thinking runs out. A child who never gives learns that money is only ever for holding.

So we teach it as a skill. Decide in advance. Choose a cause you can explain. Give a fixed share rather than whatever happens to be left.

Leftovers are not a plan, at any age.

Four things that make giving stick with a child.

Let them choose the cause. A child who picks the animal shelter themselves gives again; a child handed a cause gives once, to please you.

Make it a share, not a leftover. A fixed portion set aside first — because giving what remains teaches that generosity is only what happens when there is spare.

Let them see where it went. Photographs, a thank-you note, the thing that got bought.

And let them give time, because not every child has money and the lesson is identical.

Then talk about how it felt. That reflection is what turns it into a habit.

Most of a small nonprofit’s year is funded in its final eight weeks. That is why your feed is about to fill up with appeals, including this one.

So here is ours, without the theatre. No countdown clock, no doubling gimmick. Just what the money does.

It prints books — development, illustration and printing for the Wealth Wise Kids Project. It keeps Pennies & Pages and Budget Buddies free for families. And it moves children, funding the field trips that are always the first line cut when money is short.

The Carter & Olay Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3). Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Give once or monthly at carterolayfoundation.org

Today is World Kindness Day.

Generosity is not the opposite of financial sense. It is part of it. A planned gift requires knowing what you have, deciding in advance, and accepting a trade-off — which is the same skill set as every other good money decision.

So teach a child to plan a gift and you have taught them to plan.

Ask one today what they would give to, and why. The answer is usually better than ours.

Ask a nine-year-old what business they would start with a hundred dollars, then get out of the way.

We have run this in workshops for years and the answers are never small. Dog walking, yes — but also custom trainers, a snack stand outside the barbershop, a phone-screen repair service, a company that walks younger children to school.

What is happening inside that answer is a child pricing something, spotting a need in their own neighbourhood, and imagining themselves as the person who solves it.

That last part is the whole point. Entrepreneurship at nine is mostly a story about who you are allowed to be.

It is Global Entrepreneurship Week. Ask a child the question and put the answer below.

Biz Kids Bootcamp is a week that ends with children pitching their own businesses to real adults.

It starts with a problem rather than an idea — a real one, in a place they know. Then costing it, which is where a child discovers revenue and profit are not the same thing. Then the plan: who buys it, how they hear about it, and what happens if nobody turns up on day one.

Then they make something that exists outside their head. Then they stand up and defend it.

That last skill outlasts the business by about forty years.

It is Global Entrepreneurship Week. Schools and community partners, get in touch about hosting one.

Nine weeks of posts, one argument.

The gap is real and it is measured. It forms early — largely by age seven, long before anyone offers a class. And it responds to teaching, by up to twenty percent.

That last number is the reason this is a Foundation rather than a report.

So we teach it early and properly: books children see themselves in, an academy that treats money as a skill, a bootcamp where they build something real. Delivered through schools, libraries and community centres that families already trust, so what starts does not stop.

Then we check whether it worked, and change what did not.

More than 30 communities so far. Join us.

We are not trying to teach children about money. We are trying to change what they believe is possible for them.

The financial literacy is how we do it. It is not the point of it.

A child who understands what money is and how it moves does not just make better decisions. They make bigger plans — about school, about work, about what their family might one day own.

That is the gap we are actually closing.

December is our biggest month. If you have been meaning to give, that is when it counts most.

The Carter & Olay Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3). Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.