Mission
In keeping with Ms Myrtle Denton Kelly’s lifelong passion, we provide financial literacy education to young people (ages 11 to 15) from low-income areas. In the short time since inception and implementation of the foundation, KLH has conducted two financial workshops that have touched 40 young people from the economically challenged homes in New York City. In order to maximize dialogue between students and teacher, we work with small groups in workshops that span 12 weeks in duration. Sessions last three hours and meet once a week. The goal of each workshop is to make sure that each student has a measurable understanding of the areas of basic finance and money related topics. We accomplish this by implementing educational pedagogy that has proven to be effective: project based learning, Paideia seminars, guest lectures, and oral and written assessments.
Our ultimate vision includes semi-annual workshops around the country, which will prepare youth to accumulate wealth and entrepreneurship or employment, as well as start them on the path toward home ownership. We work to “meet the young people where they are.” Since the overwhelming majority of public schools do not include basic financial literacy curricula (often young people do not receive this type of training at home), KLH begins young people with basic financial training in order to help them develop solid financial habits that are applicable to their lives today; and will serve them well in the future. We believe that if we can make financial literacy exciting and relevant to the lives of these young people, then we will spark their thirst for additional knowledge and we will be able to empower them to become economically self-sufficient.
About Us
Myrtle Denton Kelly, a long-time resident of Chicago by way of Grenada, Mississippi was a woman of untold virtue who was passionate about the youth she encountered and dedicated her life to the task of educating and mentoring the neighborhood youth in her community. It was very important that the young people that she saw innocently playing grow up to become financially responsible adults. To this, Ms. Kelly stressed to her young audience the idea of fiscal management. Ms. Kelly did not simply teach this concept to her grandchildren but to all children she encountered.
On her monthly sojourns to Grenada, Mississippi, she saw the children of her hometown living in poverty. Although they were not rich in possessions, they were rich with the nuggets of life lessons that she shared and was considered a treasure of their community. The passion with which she would share these lessons was translated into a sense of importance and immediacy; the thought that if it was important to her, it should be important to them. From her they learned the importance of economic self-sufficiency and strove to help them develop the tools that would lead them towards financial independence.
One of the children that benefited from the lessons that she shared was her grandson, Anthony Laurent. In honor of her memory, in 2002 he founded, Kelly’s Loving Hands, KLH. The original intent of the organization was to provide college tuition for high achieving minority students. After identifying an excellent opportunity to teach youth to be fiscally independent by creating savings accounts and applying for student loans, KLH decided to formalize a curriculum to be implemented in mini lessons to train youth about money and how to accumulate it. Like the efforts of his grandmother, Mr. Laurent’s efforts are philanthropic hence; KLH was incorporated and granted 501 (c)(3) status in 2003.
Philosophy
We have assumed the civic duty and responsibility to share knowledge and provide opportunities for others to attain financial independence – a notion that we stress through our work. At Kelly’s Loving Hands, we believe that promoting economic self-sufficiency in under-served communities is a critical step towards empowering disadvantaged youth with tools for understanding money on a very rudimentary level. Our goal is to create a cadre of young people with the critical fiscal management skills and tools that will, in turn, equip them to become economically self-reliant and self-sufficient adults.
