03 Mar 2022

To teach young people to be financially prudent, director of FinEdu, Otisitswe Tawana-Madziba will hold an event dubbed Fun money for Kids at Extension 12 Park on Saturday.

The event, targeting three to 12-year-olds was meant to instil long lasting impact and help shape the future financial wellbeing of the children.

In an interview on Wednesday the director of FinEdu said children would attain wisdom on financial facts of life.

“We want to make the day fun, by teaching them through games so that they learn while having fun,” she said.

She also said their organisation was aimed at empowering children and youth to make informed choices about their financial life.

FinEdu also runs a programme called Raising Money-Smart Kids.

She said children needed to learn the skill of using money, hence they will be taught budgeting skills.

“We will teach them to figure out their income, spending and understand the difference between needs and wants and how to priorotise such,” she said.

Apart from the fun day, she said FinEdu also had a closed group on social media where they encourage and teach parents how to empower their children with monetory skills such as understanding the importance of paying themselves first and living within their means, among others.

To expand this concept, Tawana-Madziba has published a book titled Raising Money Smart Kids.

The book, she said, imparts money lessons according to developmental stages of children and their different cognitive abilities.

The book, she said, was structured into three parts covering money topics relating to pre-school and primary school going children.

The FinEdu director also said parents should understand that what they did with money, their attitude, values and behaviour around money and entrepreneurship had a long lasting impact on their children’s future financial wellbeing.

“In most cases parents are not aware that children are watching and ‘absorbing’, whether you talk to them intentionally about money or not,” she said.

She advised parents to know that every day was an opportunity to plant a seed in their children’s lives.

The director said her parents, who owned a tuck-shop, left her with a priceless inheritance of knowledge and business principles.

“I have committed to doing the same for my two daughters, Taboka and Tashatha and I am not doing this by myself. 

It is a joint mission between me and my husband,” she said.

The author said she had a strong background in Economics and Finance, which had helped her to appreciate that knowledge was never enough when it came to money management.

To have a good relationship with money, she said, discipline was the only virtue required. ENDS