By Gabriel Olawale

The schools for the blind and deaf have recently acquired saving and investment skill as part of activities to commemorate 2015 Global Money Week. The financial empowerment seminar which took place at the Wesley School for the Deaf and Pacelli School for the Blind and Partially Sighted Children, witnessed huge participation as a non-governmental organization, Financial Literacy for All, FLA, equipped the students with the knowledge of how to save and spend wisely.

The programme witnessed the heartfelt joy of the blind students as most of them condemned the frequent change of Nigeria’s currency which took them time to master and urged banks to prepare some forms in Braille to help them read before making decision. They also called for embossment of ATM machines to enable them know the number they are pressing.

Speaking shortly after the empowerment talk and presentation of books to the students, the Project Director, FLA, Laja Shoniran, said that the students’ inability to see or hear does not reduce their capability and effectiveness but lack of appropriate knowledge can do it.

“As part of the society, being blind does not separate them from what is happening around them because they also need to make some decisions about money too. Being blind does not separate you from what is going on in the market, you can be cheated like every other person but the more you know, the better you have the chance to protect what you have worked for.

There is a report that blind people are twice as prone to poverty than sighted people, so they really need to be empowered with the right information on how to save and invest money because failure to equipped them with information on how to manage money can make them prone to poverty.

Shoniran explained that the essence of the programme is to take the financial education message they have being taking to the sighted people in the past six years to the challenged groups of the society. “Financial education is a skill that everybody needs so we decided to reach out to the challenged group of our society because they also engaged in what complete people went through on daily basis. So for complete people to still be experiencing challenges in making some decision like financing, banking, investment among how much more of those that could not see or hear.

Some of them cannot hear and nowadays there is limit to what is being said, most of our word now is visual, many of the things we see and respond to are usually visual so we fell that the time has come to focus on the challenged group of our society to enlighten them on how to save and invest. As part of activities for this year, we have been to Childville School Ogudu GRA.

It is high time people imbibe the habit of saving because it is important to know how to manage money and to be better in life. One beautiful thing about it is that money skill start from when we are born and it goes through our life why many other skills you can drop them along the line in life. Our key message is to teach people how to manage things because that is where saving comes in, curtain your spending, spend wisely, people need to learn how to save money, manage money and invest wisely so all this is what financial literary for all represent.

The programme is target at every segment of the society, because market women, business men, children, youth, workforce, retirement age all of this set of people need it.

While most of our programme is target at young and youth is simply because we found them more amendable with change and we strongly belief that the young people is our future and if they can imbibe the spirit of saving and invest wisely, it will not only reduce crime rate but also encourage proper management of our national resources because if a girl or boy learn how to manage his or her own resources, if he has the opportunity to be in position of authority he will be better able to manage the resources of the country. It will also help them to run businesses successfully. Why most businesses failed is because of financial ignorant.

Shoniran however appreciate the Common Wealth Secretarial, London and Central Bank of Nigeria for supporting the project materially and technically. While receiving the books on behalf of the school, The Principal, Pacelli School for the Blind and Partially sighted, Sister Jane Onyemeri appreciate the organizer of the seminar which aimed to fully integrated their student into t