VM Foundation empowers youth in social enterprise programme
The Victoria Mutual (VM) Foundation has empowered some 10,000 secondary-level students in the areas of financial literacy and entrepreneurship through its partnership with the British Council on the Social Enterprise in Secondary Schools (SESS-J) Programme, which ended in March.
VM assistant vice-president of group corporate affairs and communication, Clover Moore, in delivering remarks as part of the SESS-J 2nd Annual Summit held recently, said the foundation has been working, through the programme to empower youth to make sound financial decisions.
“What’s important is helping our young people to feel like they can make decisions that will help them to advance themselves, as sometimes the sense of powerlessness drives frustration, creates apathy, and may make them want to give up,” she said.
Moore noted that when youth understand how to spend, save and invest money and can apply these lessons in their daily lives, it can lead to a shift in the financial decision-making not just for them, but also their parents and peers.
The SESS-J Programme engaged secondary-level students in a range of activities and training sessions with the aim to increase students’ knowledge of social innovation and entrepreneurship through seven core skills. These are financial literacy, critical thinking and problem-solving, collaboration and communication, creativity and imagination, citizenship, digital literacy, and student leadership.
The programme engaged 15 schools and saw over 10,000 youth involved in social enterprise awareness sessions and 250 participating in social enterprise clubs started at the schools, through VM Foundation seed funding. Meanwhile, 10 master trainers and 60 teachers were trained to deliver the social enterprise methodology, and 170 organisations were engaged through project activities.
In addition to an investment of some $5.4 million annually for the roll-out of the three-year programme, the VM Foundation also utilised its wealth of experience in financial education to create meaningful content for the participants.
The VM Foundation developed an interactive financial literacy training booklet, dubbed VM FETE (Financial Education to Empower) Secondary Schools Edition, alongside supporting videos relevant for young people.
A microsite has also been developed, to be launched shortly, which seeks to improve access to resources and material used throughout the programme.
“The VM Foundation is actively committed to its purpose of advancing the financial well-being of Jamaicans at home and in the Diaspora. Through social enterprise engagements, our young people can learn the tenets of running a formal business successfully, by understanding principles such as marketing or how to choose products, while giving back to their community and making a difference,” Moore said.