Financial literacy refers to the set of skills and knowledge that allow individuals to make informed and effective decisions with their financial resources.

In collaboration with Yong-En Care Centre, three NTU students organised a Financial Literacy Workshop and Family Day on 15 July 2017 for families who are also clients at the Centre. Over 20 adults and children attended the event.

The Financial Literacy Workshop and Family Day aims to promote family bonding while educating both adults and children in effectively managing their finances. Participants were engaged in games and hands-on activities to drive home the target messages.

Overall, it was a successful event and the participants had feedback that they enjoyed themselves too.

The Highlights

“Frame of Dreams” Activity

Participants found the “Frame of Dreams” segment of the workshop to be the most enjoyable part of the event.

Participants were grouped according to their families, to discuss and create an artwork (from recycled magazines and newspapers) to showcase their dreams. It is in the hope that this activity would spur them to make their dreams a reality, rather than viewing it as impossible. Some of these dreams include “children graduating from a university”, “finish paying off the loans” and “saving up to bring their family on a holiday”. These may seem common to us (or we may have already achieved it), but for these families, it may be a daunting task due to their financial condition in the household.

Interactions with the Participants

Seeing the smiles on the participants’ faces definitely made our day.

Initially, most of them only interacted with their family members. However, through the various activities held during the event, the participants shared openly and started to interact more with each other. This helped to foster a stronger community bonding.

The Memories

A volunteer facilitator provided guidance to adult participants in writing their SMART goals.
The team helped the participants to craft their Frame of Dreams.
The younger participants watched a video at one of the workshops on how to save their money.
Adult participants listened attentively to the volunteer speaker who conducted the goal setting workshop.
A participant’s Frame of Dreams.

Reflection #1 – The Challenges

Unexpected delay

Many of the participants arrived late and we had to wait for them to arrive before we could officially start the event. Hence, we had to push back the programmes and cancel the ice-breaking session that was initially planned.

Catering to a wide age range

We did not expect the age range of the young participants to be so wide (ie. 5 to 13 years old). Our content for the children’s workshop was crafted towards primary school-going children (ie. 7 to 12 years old), hence some of them were not able to fully understand it.

Reflection #2 – The Takeaways

  • Both the participants and the organising team felt that it was a memorable and fulfilling event.
  • The feedback gathered from the participants showed that they enjoyed themselves very much while learning how to enhance their financial resilience as a family.
  • The participants were also happy that they were able to participate in such a workshop as a family as most workshops cater either to adults or children.