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Today marked the inaugural LLT financial literacy training program in the Dominican. After rehearsing last night we came prepared with handouts and presentations translated into Spanish to present for the Coop te Crecer youth program in the Batey Vasca. Our goal with our training for youth was to provide training on setting S.M A.R.T. goals, making a budget and setting savings targets. We were able to use material shared by CPABC to develop the courses and staff from Coop te Crecer to translate the presentation in advance.
Admittedly we were unsure of how the day would go but were excited to kickoff the training. When we arrived in the Batey there were 30-40 students and volunteers ranging from 8-18 years old ready for our course. We were able to present the topics focusing more on time management as most of the Batey youth have no money whatsoever. Thanks to excellent translation assistance from Carlos and Claudybel the training seemed to make an impact on the group. We were blown away by the maturity of some of the youth with goals including "paying for their parents medicine" and "going to university to bevome doctors, veterinarians, police officers, or fashion designers".
After the course we said our goodbyes to Pastor David and Anna and drove across to Fudesa in Juan Tomas.
Although we needed to adapt and think on the fly it was encouraging to see our knowledge impacting on young futures.
After arriving at Fudesa we toured the school and were able to provide some impromptu financial consulting to Pastor Richard and Dario who are both leaders in the school.
