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Josh Smith was born, raised and is now employed in Atlanta. He's even made a pretty good name for himself as a key member of the hometown Hawks.

As a way to give back to the only place he's ever called home, he did what a lot of other NBA players do with their summers: He held a basketball camp. The first J-Smooth camp, which was held last week, brought in children aged 5 to 17 from Georgia and the Carolinas.

Unlike a lot of camps, though, this was not all basketball. Campers had to go school for a large portion of each day. "One point we really want to stress here is education," Smith said. "We want the kids to realize that not everyone is going to be a professional athlete. They are going to need a good education."

The organization that runs the classroom sessions in Smith's camp is the Rae of Light Foundation. "We ran this same program at the Allen Iverson camp two years ago," Brandi Rae Hicks, the foundation's head, said. "Our purpose is to teach financial literacy, academic preparedness and basic life skills."

On the first day of class, campers were given a handbook about managing finances with an emphasis on preparing for college. One of the activities Hicks supervises is the million-dollar exercise. She asks students what they would do with a million dollars, and writes out their budgets based on the suggested expenses.

"We try to teach them the difference between wants and needs, assets and liabilities, and we take them through a paycheck," Hicks said. "At first the kids spend the money on things they see on TV every day. Then on the last day we do the activity again, and the difference in how they spend the money is like night and day." Link