We were lucky to catch up with Sohan Shah recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Sohan, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
Our main mission has always been to promote financial literacy and economics education to underserved and underprivileged populations. As we strive to accomplish this, we have found our purpose in not just teaching finance and creating educational content but fostering a unique connection between those we help and the lifelong lessons learned. While this purpose is something we found worthwhile, impactful, and necessary, many major steps were first needed to accomplish this.
Starting as a very small organization, it was difficult to build a solid reputational foundation, following, and credibility. However, this didn’t stop us. By contacting and connecting with over 50 local businesses, organizations, and schools, we were able to start dispersing our message and purpose. Initially working with local schools to host workshops with students in underserved areas, we quickly realized our purpose was to help students around the country not just learn basic financial literacy and economic topics, but to apply themselves with our content that will help them strive in their future daily lives. This helped us foster that connection with those we help with our content.
Soon, our organization was able to conduct more workshops in more places around the Greater Dallas area, creating a well-known local reputation for ourselves. The biggest takeaway from helping out locally has been the personal connections our team has made with those we have helped; we have heard of various experiences, stories, and questions from many of the students we have helped, all helping us become more involved and connected with those we impact and spread our message to.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Since the start, we have always been focused on bridging the widening gap between those with and without proper financial literacy education and resources. As a nonprofit, we create multiple initiatives that tackle this goal in different ways: workshops, collaborative ventures, and online content.
Through our workshops, we present and teach our curated curriculum, which contains various content that covers a wide range of financial and economic topics. Each component of our curriculum strives to make difficult topics easy to digest, especially when taught to younger audiences. Every workshop usually ends with an activity (usually involving prize candy): an interactive way for students to apply themselves with the information they just learned from the presentation, helping them to further understand the content to later apply in future uses. With these workshops, our organization has been able to benefit from the personal connections our instructors create with our students, helping both sides foster a meaningful memory and impact.
By partnering with a wide range of businesses and organizations, NFEC can expand operations to create and provide more workshops, content, and other ventures that help us follow our purpose. With collaborations including Bank of America, JP Morgan, NuMinds Enrichment, and others, we have been able to help not just more people but also help our organization expand its reach. This includes our opportunity to present as a guest speaker at the 2024 U.S. Housing and Urban Development Native Homeownership and Asset Building Summit, a unique experience that allowed us to build relationships with many of the country’s decision-makers in Native American housing policies. Through this event, we have been working with various Native American tribes to provide a comprehensive outlook toward homeownership success and real estate principles, helping Natives across the country.
Our online content includes much of our curriculum from workshops, YouTube videos on various current economic issues and policies, and interviews with decorated and experienced professors and people in the finance industry, giving their insights on current financial topics that give users unique perspectives into the business world.
With the multiple initiatives we take on as a high school student-led nonprofit, we hope to continue making a significant impact on people across the country, giving them tools and resources that will be incredibly beneficial in their futures. The most special aspect of our mission is the different people we meet along the way. Hearing their unique stories and perspectives gives us new outlooks on finance, economics, education, and life in general.
Be on the lookout for new workshops this summer, a new curriculum guided toward Native American housing development, and further expansion as our new team settles in.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
The three most impactful qualities throughout our journey have been our self-reliance on our team, the personal connections we have made, and our passion for keeping this organization moving forward.
As an organization founded with just three high schoolers, all the work fell on them. Whether it was creating our curriculum, finding places to conduct workshops at, or contacting different businesses, the work was always done with quality and persistence. Now, we continue those same qualities to not only improve our current operations, but also ensure that everything we do is meaningful and has a positive impact. By delegating different tasks to different specialized teams, our work is done more efficiently and effectively. With our innovative and collaborative team, NFEC continues to reduce the financial literacy burden on people all around the country, hopefully one day providing easy and accessible education for all.
One of the most important qualities and skills we have learned over the past few years is the importance of strong personal relationships and connections. Many of our regular structured workshops haven’t been easy to create. Almost all of the places we teach at have been places we have had to find, research, and connect with. After multiple instances of this, we have gained the confidence and experience to start building relationships with local businesses, organizations, and nonprofits to partner with. This is what led us to construct meaningful partnerships with businesses such as Bank of America, JP Morgan, GS Wealth Management, and more. Of our core principles, strong and frequent communication with all of our connections has given us the platform that we have today, allowing us to expand and reach people around the nation.
Finally, our passion to keep this organization moving forward has fueled us to continue workshops, curriculum curation, and partnership connections. Run purely by high school students with an overseeing Board of college students, the NFEC team strives to make time daily to help pursue the visions and goals of the organization, ensuring that we achieve our passion to help aid the financial literacy gap in many age demographics across the nation.
For anyone looking to follow through on their journey, I believe that motivation with a persevering outlook is necessary. By this, I mean that being motivated to pursue a passion isn’t always enough; sometimes, pushing yourself to explore outside of your comfort zone will allow you to persevere through difficult struggles, giving you the ability to pursue your journey.
Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?
Over the past year, NFEC has been more active and engaging than ever before. We have created over 30 workshops in 5 different locations, created over 10 new modules in our curriculum, expanded to 4 other states, and been invited as a speaker at the U.S. Housing and Urban Development’s ONAP 2024 Native Homeownership & Asset Building Summit. With this summit, we were able to speak about innovative and unique plans to help Native American tribes across the country to improve their homes, bring an in-depth real estate education, and provide important skills on homeownership success. This has sparked our new initiatives to bring financial literacy education to Native American communities across the nation.
With all of the activities that NFEC has and continues to do, our biggest growth area has been our mission expansion. Before, we focused on bringing finance and economics education to the underserved communities in Dallas, and then we expanded nationally. Now, we serve Dallas and other communities around the nation while also curating an extensive curriculum tailored to Native Americans to provide them with all the tools and resources necessary to be successful in their homeownership ventures.
With our new leadership coming in, we hope to continue all of the impactful initiatives from before while also creating new plans to help more people around the country.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://nationalfec.org
- Instagram: @nationalfec
Image Credits
All photos taken by members of the National Finance and Economics Collective.
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