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Financial literacy pillar expands Young Wall Street and explores medical-debt relief partnership
Summary
Young Wall Street described plans to scale summer investing boot camps for students; the ad hoc also discussed a potential partnership with Undue Medical Debt to cancel uncollectible medical debts using purchased debt models.
The Shelby County Racial Equity Ad Hoc Committee on Jan. 23 heard updates from the financial literacy pillar on scaling youth investment education and on exploratory work to reduce uncollectible medical debt.
Bridal Blair McGrew of Young Wall Street said the nonprofit's flagship program is a two-week summer boot camp that will scale from 50 participants in 2024 to 100 in 2025, with a longer-term goal of reaching 200 families per summer. "Our premier program is a 2 week summer boot camp... In 2024, we doubled from 25 to 50. In 2025, we're doubling from 50 to a hundred," McGrew said. She gave tentative dates for two boot-camp sessions: June 16–27 and July 7–18, with end-of-program showcases that commissioners have been invited to attend.
Committee members also described early-stage talks with Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit that purchases uncollectible medical debt to cancel it. The chair, Edmond Ford Jr., said the organization presented a model where debt can be purchased for pennies on the dollar and described the potential scale: "They... buy the debt up for 1¢ on the dollar, the capacity building is basically eliminating up to $20,000,000 worth of medical debt," he said.
Speakers discussed the need to coordinate hospitals and regional partners to make the model effective and noted examples where municipalities used ARPA funds to buy and cancel medical debt. No county funds or commitments were approved at the meeting; members asked program leads to develop implementation details and data metrics for future reporting.
Young Wall Street said it is finalizing a logic model and data collection plan to track individual student outcomes and to measure program impact over time. The pillar also plans a high-school recruitment tour in March and April, visiting one host school per council district while inviting other district schools to participate.
