This year, 212 Form 4 students from 14 schools in KL, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Sabah are participating in TEEF’s Money & Me: Youth Financial Empowerment Programme.

The programme is carried out in collaboration with partners from the private sector as well as Rotary Clubs. The 13 partners this year comprise Baker Hughes, BHP, Deloitte, EY, GE, INTI International University, PwC, Spring Galaxy and five Rotary Clubs – Central Damansara, Gombak, Sentul, Kota Kinabalu and Kota Kinabalu South.

Money & Me is approved by Jabatan Pendidikan Negeri (state education department) in the four states as a co-curricular programme for Form 4 students. The lessons are carried out by volunteers from partner organisations and/or school teachers either face-to-face in schools or virtually via Google Meet and Google Classroom.

The programme teaches students the importance of saving and how to save. It also equips them with skills such as budgeting and introduces them to entrepreneurship as well as starting with a small business project. Money & Me also encourages them to give back to those in need.

One of the features of TEEF’s two financial literacy programmes – Money & Me & Cekap Duit – is training for facilitators, that is, volunteers and teachers who run those programmes.

TEEF organised a virtual training session on May 21, 2022 for Money & Me: Youth Financial Empowerment Programme facilitators. A total of 78 participants consisting of volunteers from TEEF partner organisations and teachers from participating schools attended the Zoom session. The two-hour event included a micro-teaching session and sharing by teachers and partners on challenges faced in delivering the programmes and how they tackled these.

This year, for Money & Me, TEEF is working with 13 partners and teachers in 14 schools in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Sabah to teach financial literacy and basic entrepreneurship skills to Form 4 students.

Another training session was held on April 30, 2022 for Cekap Duit: Cakap Tentang Duit , a financial literacy programme targeting youths who are not in school.

Cekap Duit is a financial literacy programme in Bahasa Malaysia jointly developed by local NGO Malaysian CARE (CARE) and TEEF. It is based on Money & Me.

A total of 38 participants from various NGOs in Malaysia attended the two-hour online session during which they were introduced to the programme structure and contents.

Our thanks to our two speakers from CARE – David Chin and Ita Bah Nan. David, manager for Service Development at CARE, shared about his hands-on experience as a Cekap Duit trainer at Sekolah Integriti Kajang at Kajang Prison and later at Pusat Koreksional Puncak Alam. Ita, manager for Community Development at CARE, spoke about the level of financial awareness and entrepreneurship among the Orang Asli community in Perak and Pahang.

The Q&A session had to be extended to accommodate questions from participants who wanted to know more about financial literacy and practices among the Orang Asli and also CARE’s financial literacy programme targeting this community in particular.