Financial education empowering women

The free program will span for eight weeks and hopes to help women take control of their finances. Pic: UNSPLASH

By Gabriella Payne

Financial matters can often be daunting and difficult to navigate, but a new interactive workshop run by Living Learning Pakenham Inc aims to change all that, by empowering women with financial literacy and providing training to better understand money and money management skills.

This free pilot program aims to help women in the community “build a better financial future” for themselves and their families and will cover topics such as setting financial goals, calculating interest rates, comparing different credit options, lowering utility bills and understanding financial abuse and how to get help if they need it.

As well as being the first time this program has been run at the centre, Living Learning Inc will trial a new model of teaching, allowing mothers to bring their children with them to class, with a separate space for the kids to play whilst the women learn.

Miriam Cadwallader, the CEO of Living Learning Pakenham Inc said that this program had been made possible through a wellbeing grant the centre received last year from the Cardinia Shire Council and she was excited to see the results.

“This interactive workshop will help provide women with practical solutions for financial problems they may be facing, and we’re really looking forward to trialling this new model of participation, where the kids will be included,” Ms Cadwallader said.

“This program will give women the opportunity to be in a room with other women who are in the same situation as them and stops them from being isolated.”

Ms Cadwallader said that through their work with many multicultural groups and migrant communities, Living Learning Inc had noticed “a real need” for these types of services, particularly for migrant women and by allowing children to come along to sessions, they hoped to make the program more accessible for those with young kids.

“We often have people experiencing financial distress come to us for help, and we work with a number of multicultural groups and have found that financial literacy is always an issue,” Ms Cadwallader said.

“These women might have come on a partner visa and have no language skills and no understanding of the financial world here in Australia.

So this program will allow them to get an understanding of what their rights are and what they can and can’t do on their visas,” she said.

Ms Cadwallader said that a childcare professional would be on hand to help with the children while the sessions were running and the class would be a safe, welcoming and friendly space for all women, with certificates handed out at the end of the program.

Spanning over eight weeks, the program is set to start on Monday 15 March and will consist of one class per week that runs for two and a half hours, from 10am until 12.30pm.

Ms Cadwallader said that she hoped this program would help many women gain confidence and learn valuable financial literacy skills that they could use to take control of their own financial situations.

“We hope this workshop will help women to understand their financial situations and assist them in setting goals for the future,” she said.

For more information about the program, visit Living Learning Pakenham Inc at 6B Henry Street Pakenham, www.livinglearning.org.au or phone (03) 5941 2389.