With South Africa’s savings culture at its lowest in 68 years, Stanlib hopes the screening of SmartBucks 3 movie will help reverse this downward trend.
Stanlib is one of South Africa’s largest unit trust companies and spans nine other African countries. It is committed to driving a financial literacy movement to get South Africans saving and investing to help reduce household indebtedness and make people financially free.
“Our household, business, and government savings rates are extremely low,” said Stanlib chief economist, Kevin Lings at the movie launch. “Unfortunately our savings rate has deteriorated significantly over the past few decades and this makes people very vulnerable,” he said.
Lings said the key to this was to empower the youth with financial skills from an early age by teaching them how to manage money. Four years ago, Stanlib launched the Smartbucks, Mind your Moolah campaign, designed to teach high school pupils the basics of managing money, while entertaining them at the same time. This is the first initiative of its kind in South Africa.
“Instilling financial discipline will help build a stronger savings culture in our country and turn the tide against over-indebtedness and the vulnerability it brings,” said Lings.
Smartbucks, Mind your Moolah 3 is produced by The Monarchy Group and features well-known comedian Mpho ‘Popps’ Modikoane, and is designed to be educational while entertaining its young audience.
It tackles some of the biggest challenges facing the youth, including over-indebtedness and wasteful spending, and uses real-life scenarios in a game-show setting. To ensure the movie is first and foremost educational, it features a qualified financial trainer to re-inforce the financial messages to be learnt.
The 60-minute movie will be shown to high school pupils across the country from May to June at selected Ster-Kinekor cinemas, as well as on mobile screens in rural areas and to ensure the film’s lessons last a lifetime, pupils will be given interactive booklets to keep.
