Enhancing one’s financial literacy help to provide a clear understanding of the financial concepts and challenges, as well as the skills and capacity to better manage one’s finances and make better financial decisions. By improving financial literacy through education, not only it builds one’s financial foundation, it also helps to create pathways out of poverty which aligned with WHO’s 1st Sustainable Development Goal (SDG1) on poverty eradication. With this notion, Faculty of Business and Management (FBM) Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) organized its first financial literacy talk “Celik Wang” to the school students of Sekolah Kebangsaan Parit Mahang (SKPM) on 18th May 2022. Educating children about personal finance could instill good habits that could assist them for their future well-being, particularly matters relate to their finances.

“Celik Wang” was a community networking project coordinated by FBM under the guidance of Dr Nor Farradila Abdul Aziz (FBM’s Deputy Dean of Industry, Community and Alumni Network) and assisted by students from the Islamic Banking Association (ISBA). It focused on increasing literacy on personal financial planning amongst the school students. A total of 40 standard 6 students, aged 12, from Sekolah Kebangsaan Parit Mahang (SKPM) participated in this talk. It was held virtually from 3pm to 5 pm as to coincide with the school’s co-curricular time. FBM’s Deputy Dean of Academic, Associate Professor Dr Zarina Denan, officiated the program and delivered the opening remarks whereby she highlighted the important of upgrading one’s financial knowledge in accordance to the current developments and the need of cooperation from various parties to continue organizing financial literacy programs. Also present at the talk were Dr Adibah Alawiyah Osman (ISBA’s advisor), Sarif Bin Mat Din (SKPM’s Senior Administrative Assistant), Mohd Naswadi Bin Yusof (SKPM’s Coordinator of Standard 6 students) as well as the program’s facilitators’ (FBM’s finance lecturers and ISBA’s students).

Despite the fact that personal financial planning is a complicated concept that many people struggle to grasp, this young group of students was able to grasp the concept and demonstrate their enthusiasm by actively participated in the interactive quiz section, thanks to the guidance and easy approach used by FBM’s finance lecturers, namely Dr Norzitah Abd Karim, Dr Siti Aminah Mainal, Dr Nura Lina Md Elias, and Puan Syahrul-Niza Kamarul Ariffin. Mrs. Noraliza Nawam, SKPM’s Headmaster affirmed that early exposure to financial planning could benefit the students both personally and in terms of their entrepreneurship’s course. It is hope that there will be more of such programs in the future and the involvement of more schools is anticipated.