Hot take that shouldn't even be hot:
Ashkenazi Passover food is good. Chabad passover food is good.
It doesn't need to be like the food the rest of the year for it still to be good.
I like pizza. I like sushi. I like steak... I don't need my pizza to remind me of sushi for it to be a good steak. I can enjoy food for what it is.
A lot of you have never had to sleep in your car, and it shows.
The idea is not that $250 compounded is going to make a life-changing impact on its own. Optimistically, that money could grow to $1,400 over 18 years, which isn't enough to do much.
What it does is teach children about investing over time. You watch the money grow, become curious about how it all works, and feel like you have some control over your life. Agency, for those on the margins, is a superpower.
For low-income families, investing is usually not a priority; survival is. You hear about investing from time to time and have some loose understanding that it could be helpful, but it's something "other people do" and not for you.
I remember long stretches of my life where I looked at "other people" and simply assumed that wasn't a viable path for me. They were good, smart people, which is why they had money, and I was not. Which is why I had to learn how to make $20 last a week.
No one in my life taught me about investing; it wasn't a priority. Other stuff was. People find the time and money for things that are important to them, so if no one tells you investing is important, you don't prioritize it.
Giving children in lower-income zip codes a window into what investing might look like could fundamentally change the trajectory of their lives. Not all of them, but even a small percentage who see a path out becomes meaningful.
Dunking on the Dell's donation is a tell that you've had a pretty smooth path through life, so congrats. It also shows you don't understand 2nd and 3rd order impacts.
A mentor early in life, teaching me about how money works, would have saved me years of pain. Perhaps this can be that lesson for a few kids.