By Flora Gonska:
Personal finance is difficult to keep up with for many adults, so learning about it when you're still young can be hugely beneficial. Koin is helping young people learn the ins and outs of financial literacy. Read on!
FG: Tell us all about you and your organization! KOIN: Koin is an educational platform that aims to make financial success attainable for adolescents. We are a group of six teenagers who formed this organization at Leangap, a startup incubator, based on our shared belief that youth are not prepared to handle a financially stable future. Koin emphasizes simple-yet-thorough courses, as well as student bonding and interaction through our Discord server. To give our students a taste of finance in the real world, we even coded a Discord bot to simulate that experience. FG: Why do you think it’s important for your generation to let their voices be heard?
KOIN: Our generation is, quite literally, the future. The members of Generation Z are also extremely ethnically diverse and open-minded and are on track to be the most well-educated generation yet. America as a nation is riddled with long-run institutionalized problems, fueled by racial dissonance, oppression, and erasure. In light of the Black Lives Matter movement and other social crusades, Generation Z activists hold the drive to speak up for the silenced, empower minorities, and enact justice reform. It’s important for Generation Z students to speak to local organizations and communities when media propaganda and political distrust runs rampant. FG: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?
KOIN: If things go on the way they currently are, we’re overwhelmingly pessimistic about the future. After all, we’re experiencing the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, with an administration that’s largely given up on science and rationality in favor of delusional self-pandering. But that doesn’t have to be the case. If we can create a new world where the normal standard is an abundance of financial literacy education for our youth, we’re actually highly optimistic about the future—and that’s exactly why we created Koin. We’re confident that we can help every student become financially literate through our digestible courses and real-world applicable online economic simulation. At Koin, we want to make personal finance education simple and accessible FG: What are the most important issues facing our world right now? And in the future?
KOIN: Obviously, we’re biased ;). But the most important issue facing the world right now is predominantly a lack of education, especially in the area of personal finance. After all, most economic recessions are caused by a lack of confidence, rationality, and proper deliberation in the face of economic uncertainty, and it’s also well known that the U.S.’s overall entrepreneurial innovation and business dominance in the world is diminishing. The best way to improve all of these things—and even to reduce the effects of the current economic slump induced by COVID-19—is through a more financially educated young generation. FG: What does your organization offer that helps the world be a better place?
KOIN: Our organization, Koin, offers accessible and simple personal finance courses that will help the next generation attain their financial goals easily. Right now, the education system does not properly prepare students for the real world. Learning how to solve for x doesn’t teach us sufficient skills when taking out a loan, paying back debt, keeping track of your savings and credit card scores, etc. With Koin, students are able to learn finance from certified courses and join an online community, along with a gaming simulation that simulates a real-world economy for students to practice what they’ve learned. We want future generations to approach economic and personal financial problems with a face of certainty and confidence. Educating the next generation is integral to the economic success and stability of the future. FG: Did you vote in the last election?
KOIN: Yes, of course. After all, as the premier leaders of America in the future, through both business, tech, and politics, it’s absolutely essential that we make our voice heard in the political sphere. Our current administration has failed on all fronts to provide the kind of reform, including in the field of education, that we so desperately need for this nation to move forward. FG: Please tell us all about your current campaigns, projects, and endeavors.
KOIN: Koin is everywhere! Apart from our website , you can also follow us on our Instagram, @koinfinance, as well as Facebook and LinkedIn. In accordance with our goal of improving financial literacy across a new generation of leaders in America, we’re running workshops with the Palo Alto library, as well as collaborating with a prominent Gen Z news outlet, Valley Economist. We’re also sponsoring a hackathon, ModHacks, on July 24th, where we’ll be conducting a workshop at the intersection of tech, finance, and business; and if you want, you can sign up for the most recent upcoming workshop!
A Cleveland, OH, native, Flora Gonska is a non-binary trans woman from a big family. She's a writer, video producer/editor, and artist. An avid supporter of the LGBTQ+ community and equality movement, she has lived in Los Angeles for three years, and she's involved in and enjoys writing on politics, the LGBTQ+ community, and life in the U.S.