CAMPUS NEWS
NWU Vaal and ABSA work together
Annette Willemse
The Vaal Triangle Campus (NWU
Vaal) recently took hands with South
Africa’s largest consumer bank,
Absa, to provide all its first year students with financial skills training in
an exciting project called the “Absa
Empower Hour”. This initiative, coordinated jointly by the campus’ School
of Behavioural Sciences and the
Centre for Continuous Professional
Development (CCPD), aimed to bolster the levels of financial literacy
amongst all the first years that enrolled to commence with their studies
on the campus as from 2014. Students were organised into sessions
according to their subject disciplines
and got engaged through a highly
interactive and fun learning platform
provided in training format by Absa.
Dr Elrie Botha, Director of the School
of Behavioural Sciences, on the
campus, commended the effort from
Absa: “Your first year at university
as a student is usually associated
with new found freedom, also with
regards to your finances. This initiative assists students to manage that
freedom responsibly and understand
the bigger picture pertaining to their
long term financial well-being. As a
university we are in the business of
developing people, and this project
enables such development.” The initiative also formed part of the community engagement portfolio of the
campus. “As a unit we pride ourselves on contributing to the knowledge, skills and expertise of our local
communities, and what better place
to start than right here within our own
student fraternity”, said Me Mandi
Wallace, head of the CCPD.
Apart from the training, students received multimedia discs and information packages on financial planning.
For the Barclays Africa Group, empowering young people is very important: “Understanding finance and
how it affects you is a critical life skill.
Financial literacy enables you to understand, and so benefit from, financial services and products offered
by various providers. As a leading
financial services company, Absa is
uniquely positioned to improve financial literacy levels in our society. We
drive financial literacy through several consumer education programmes.
While people of all ages benefit from
our training, we place special emphasis on the youth of our nation as
a key part of our overall Citizenship
commitment, highlighting the need to
positively impact the youth in all the
markets in which we operate”, said
Martha Balyamujura, who heads up
Consumer Education at Barclays
Africa Group within the portfolio Citizenship.
Mr Ederick Stander, project
manager, was excited about
the possibilities of the initiative.
“This project reaffirms the NWU
Vaal Triangle Campus’ focus on
effectively linking with partners
from industry as to create opportunities for synergy. We
continuously look for ways to
empower and develop people
and we openly invite corporate
enterprises to join us in this
quest. Together we can create
real value adding platforms.”
Talks are currently underway to
see how the training could be
rolled out to the senior NWU
Vaal students as well as the
other campuses of the NWU.
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