Unity bank Plc has carried out training for the students of Kings College Lagos to enhance the pupils’ knowledge on financial literacy, challenges of drug abuse, as well as cyber bullying and how to avoid them.
At an event held recently at the bank’s headquarters in Lagos to commemorate the Children’s Day celebration, the Executive Director, South Bank, Unity Bank, Temisan Tuedor, maintained that not teaching the children financial literacy is a hindrance to Nigeria’s development as a nation.
As stated by Tuedor, it is wrong not to teach children financial literacy from youth, just as it is said: “Catch them young.”
“It’s by practice. It’s what you teach them now that they would take to the future and so it’s very important that they are taught financial literacy at this age because that is the foundation of development of this country. Financial literacy for me is paramount.
“This is Children’s Day and as a bank, we want to identify with the kids. We brought them here so that they can gain little financial literacy and as you know, the children are the future of any country.
“We spoke to them on two major areas, the challenges of drug abuse and cyber bullying and how to prevent them. As we all know, cyber bullying is on the rise. We have students using all types of social networks to threaten themselves and it has a major impact on those on the receiving end.
“Drug abuse is a major problem ravaging every part of the world and unfortunately, in every school there have been two to three students that have been pulled out and sent to rehab because of drug usage.
“We showed them a very important video on how to avoid bad friends and avoid doing drugs. Children only engage in things because they don’t know the consequences and once they know the consequences, they refrain from it,” he said.
The Assistant Director of Education, Kings College Lagos, Osifala Olaseni, stated that the college was highly impressed with the event noting that it was the first time the banking industry invited the students for a children’s day celebration.
“On May 27 every year, we usually go to the stadium but this was the first time we experienced this type of thing from unity bank and the college is highly impressed. This would go a long way as I believe that the students learnt a lot of things to guide them in their future endeavors,” she said.
The school called on other financial institutions and organizations to follow suit in organizing this kind of programmes for students, which further enlightens them on their responsibilities as growing youths.