adminSanderson Abel
In a country currently characterised by high unemployment, there is need to adopt strategies that have the potential to uplift youth and empower them to become self-sufficient. Two of the most important strategies for youth empowerment are savings and entrepreneurship.
Youth savings programmes are meant to encourage and promote positive savings behaviour. Youth entrepreneurship programmes help low income youth learn to become entrepreneurs while at the same time supporting themselves and contributing financially to their family. Both strategies educate youth about financial matters and provide them with a progressive series of activities and experiences purposefully designed to help them become more successful adults.
Youth savings and entrepreneurship are strategies that share common goals and objectives.
They both support the accumulation of human and financial assets by the next generation and incorporate financial education and activities to help youth make sound financial decisions.
Specifically, youth savings can be used to start small businesses and small business profits can be saved in a youth savings account.
Moreover, both youth saving and youth entrepreneurship change behaviour, outlooks, and expectations.
For example, learning about entrepreneurship gives young people a greater sense of self-determination and possibilities, even though not all will become entrepreneurs. Learning about saving inculcates patterns of behaviour and sense of possibilities that otherwise may be underdeveloped.
While these strategies do not necessarily eradicate poverty, they do give some young people the ability to invest in their futures.
Saving is not only about money management, but also knowing the difference between wants and needs.
By teaching youth savings and entrepreneurship, the ultimate goal is to break the cycle of economic poverty, give our youth a sense of hope and empower them with the practical skills that can help them to manage their destinies no matter what their dreams are.
In order for entrepreneurship and self-employment to be an effective career option, entrepreneurship education is essential.
It has been observed that the financial education as an important platform for improving financial literacy for youth and adults
In addition to providing youth with leveraged savings and business development skills, integrated youth savings and entrepreneurship programmes have the potential to provide coordinated financial literacy education with a focus on developing personal finance, economic literacy, and business specific savings habits and outcomes.
It is also important for the youth to understand that savings should come from money that has been earned and that programmes should centre on youth making decisions about their own money. Youth entrepreneurship is a fun, hands-on and effective way to earn income for savings.
Entrepreneurship education conveys important skills related to math, planning, budgeting, marketing, and saving.
In addition, essential skills related to creativity, teamwork, perseverance, critical thinking, and initiative are also obtained during the course of entrepreneurship education. Entrepreneurship education encourages independent thinking that helps all students make valuable and concrete connections to the changing world.
Entrepreneurship education moves beyond accounting and marketing to offer important lessons about the value of failure, ethical decisions, networking, and negotiating.
Youth entrepreneurship education teaches business fundamentals through hands-on experiences and encourages youth by: providing the skills necessary for youth to start their own businesses; enhancing youths’ business skills for future career opportunities and encouraging youth to continue on to higher education
There are four key elements to consider when developing financial literacy education as part of a linked youth savings and entrepreneurship program:
Personal finance: youth should learn how to develop the skills to effectively use and manage money
Economic literacy: youth should learn the knowledge and skills to discuss, react to, and act upon economic influences in one’s life
Media literacy: youth should learn critical skills to access, analyse, and apply information from the media with the goal of making decisions independent of media influences
Asset-specific training: youth should learn how to develop the skills to start their own business, using funds from their savings account
One way in which the youth can go around the whole process of savings and developing an entrepreneurship culture is through forming groups.
Savings groups are considered manageable and appropriate for youth. Participating in a savings group provides an opportunity for experiential learning about finance.
The emphasis on small, regular savings deposits; social insurance; participatory management; low pressure to borrow compared to credit-led models; and access to lump sums that can meet household demands and emergencies, all make savings groups attractive to youth.
Youth savings groups can foster behavioural changes in young people that can, in turn, re-shape adults’ perception of youth.
Savings groups can promote collaboration among self-selected young people on a structured and continuous basis. This can enable youth to strengthen their local personal and commercial networks.
It is important that the policy makers are drawn to the importance of supporting youth based initiatives such as youth savings groups because they can easily be turned into springboard for youth entrepreneurship.
This would go a long way in addressing the unemployment challenge currently bedevilling the country.
It should be understood within the national context that youth savings groups are a promising platform for the delivery of training in entrepreneurship, employability, life skills and financial literacy.
Providing training in a context where youth can regularly try out what they’re learning means lessons are more likely to stick, and persist across their lifespan.
Sanderson Abel is an Economist. He writes in his capacity as Senior Economist for the Bankers Association of Zimbabwe. For your valuable feedback and comments related to this article, he can be contacted on [email protected] or on numbers 04-744686 and 0772463008
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