The Edge Education Foundation’s two CSR programmes seek to educate youth on the importance of saving
The recent revelation that only 3% of Malaysians can afford to retire on their savings with the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) is, frankly, frightening.
The fact that most Malaysians will not have enough to retire on is not new. But the pandemic has made things worse as Covid-19-related withdrawals have resulted in critically low savings for many.
According to EPF chief strategy officer Nurhisham Hussein, a panellist at the Perdana Fellows Alumni Association Speaker Series webinar on Oct 31, by the end of this year, over half (54%) of EPF members aged 54 and under would have less than RM50,000 in their savings account. Those who had withdrawn money from their EPF funds over the past two years would have to work an extra four to six years just to cover the withdrawals, he said.
The recommended minimum amount of basic savings at age 55 is RM240,000, according to Malaysia’s National Strategy for Financial Literacy 2019-2023. That would allow a withdrawal of RM1,000 per month for 20 years following retirement. But not only do most Malaysians not have enough to retire on, they have few sources of post-retirement income other than EPF. The National Strategy says that four in 10 Malaysians rely on their EPF savings as their main source of income following retirement.
The situation makes the need for financial education for Malaysians even more pressing. Companies are recognising that too. Over the past few months, TEEF has received enquiries from companies and organisations about financial literacy training for their employees. One even wanted to know about trainer profiles, course outline and whether the cost could be claimed from the Human Resources Development Fund. Unfortunately, we were unable to oblige.
While TEEF does provide financial literacy training, it is in the form of two programmes for students and youth called Money and Me: Youth Financial Empowerment Programme and Cekap Duit: Cakap Tentang Duit. Both are corporate social responsibility programmes carried out for free with the help of partners from the corporate, charity and academic sectors.
Money & Me
Money and Me: Youth Financial Empowerment Programme is a financial literacy and basic entrepreneurship skills training programme in English for Form Four students. It was launched with a grant from Citi Foundation, which supported the programme from 2016 until 2019, and is approved by the Ministry of Education. Five schools in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor took part when the programme was launched in 2016. The number of schools grew to 13 in 2019 before the programme took a break last year because of Covid-19.
During that time, TEEF worked on adapting the programme so it could be carried out online instead of face-to-face in schools. Much of the content was converted into short videos so teachers and volunteers from Money and Me partner organisations could deliver the programme virtually, via Google Classroom.
Using Google Classroom made sense as teachers and students had become familiar with the platform since classes moved online last year. But it was new to our partners so in April this year, TEEF held a train-the-trainers workshop via Zoom for some 76 participants comprising teachers and volunteers from Money & Me partners. This year, Money & Me partners are
Baker Hughes, BHP, Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY), General Electric (GE), Inti International University in Nilai, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the Rotary Club of Sentul. Three — EY, GE and PwC — have been partners since 2016.
Despite the challenges of switching from a face-to-face programme in schools to an online format where students are in their homes, nine schools, including three new ones, signed up for Money & Me this year. As expected, although enrolment in the programme is down compared with previous years, to be able to get students to sign up for co-curricular activities at all this year is no small feat on the part of teachers.
“We were told that this year Money and Me will be conducted online, so we only took in students who have ICT devices and are willing to attend online meetings in the afternoon,” said one teacher.
Access to devices — whether handphones or personal computers — is certainly a problem. The programme targets students from the B40 category and most of them were following online lessons using handphones. Some had to share handphones with siblings. At SMK La Salle Sentul, a few students were missing Money & Me sessions because their siblings had online classes at the same time and had priority for use of the shared handphones.
On learning about the problem, Phua Keng Yong of GE, our partner at La Salle Sentul, contacted several of his friends and, overnight, managed to raise the funds to buy three Huawei tablets for the school to loan to the students who were sharing handphones with their siblings.
Phua said it took a teacher’s call to students to find out why they were missing Money & Me sessions to make him “really aware that the issue of lack of equipment for those students to join this online class is real”.
This is where BRC members can play a part in helping students acquire much-needed financial literacy skills in the Money & Me programme — by donating used but still good laptops for students to use, especially if your company is replacing your computer hardware.
Cekap Duit
Cekap Duit: Cakap Tentang Duit is TEEF’s other financial literacy programme that targets an out-of-school audience. It was co-developed in 2016 with local NGO, Malaysian Care (MCare), which customised it for youths aged 16 to 25 at Sekolah Integriti Kajang (SIK) at Kajang Prison. This Bahasa Malaysia programme is based on Money & Me.
MCare piloted the programme at SIK in 2017 with weekly sessions for three months. SIK has since been relocated to Puncak Alam Correctional Centre (PKPA) in Selangor. With the help of volunteers, MCare continued to run Cekap Duit at PKPA until the pandemic caused it to be temporarily suspended. Before that, five batches of students had benefitted from the programme at both SIK and PKPA.
In January last year, SOLS 24/7 adopted Cekap Duit as a co-curricular programme for 58 students enrolled in SOLS Academy of Innovation (SOLS.ai) at their Youth Development Centre in Segambut, Selangor. Aged from 17 to 28, the students — who are mostly Orang Asli — were taking courses that include digital and computer skills, solar PV installation and maintenance and project management.
The pre- and post-assessment results for this pioneer batch showed an improvement of 75% in the students’ financial literacy score. One student, Rokiah Sudin, shared: “Saya belajar macam mana untuk membuat perancangan bajet kewangan saya … Kita juga perlu ada simpanan dan itu penting untuk kecemasan dan masa depan.” (“I learnt how to do budgeting … We also need to have savings, it is important for emergencies and the future.”)
The National Strategy for Financial Literacy says that 52% of Malaysians would find it hard to raise RM1,000 in an emergency, so this is an important lesson. Based on the encouraging results, Danutcha Catriona Singh, managing director of SOLS 24/7, said the centre intends to conduct the programme again.
Dorothy Teoh and Munita Tan are CEO and programme manager respectively at The Edge Education Foundation. To find out more about Money & Me or Cekap Duit and how your company can play a part, email TEEF at [email protected].