Thread by @mentorshipzim

Hi everyone, I'm excited to be spending the day with you today. As a young person, I will be speaking particularly to the youthies today. The rest of you can eavesdrop 🙃

Firstly, I will share my journey into finance (specifically development/social finance)

I never thought I would land in finance. I tried to stay away because I grew up around it. My mom is a Microfinance guru in Zim & in the region. I went to many dinners where everyone seemed stressed about PAR (those in microfinance will understand this) so it didn't appeal to me

What I loved listening to were the transformational stories of women and SMEs that had grown their businesses through microloans. That made me want to work in development agencies. I wanted to be part of the action and change people's lives. (ignore how flawed this is for now)

I also loved politics.I saw how governance could make a huge difference in people's lives. I went to study Geography and Town Planning at @sheffielduni Geo helped me understand development work and Town planning is about the politics of space and people. So the course made sense

I came back to Zim after uni & the job market humbled me. 3 months of sending CVs with no prospect made me realized that the admin job that my mother had offered me was a lifeline. I took it as an opportunity to help my mom establish her firm while I looked for a "real" job.

As I worked, I bumped into Financial education material. Mom was a master trainer for a youth course. I read the materials & loved them. With my natural gift of gab and confidence, I could easily train. We put together a team of trainers and ran a ToT. This was the turning point

I loved the simplicity of the material, the action-based approach, and how it actually made practical sense. I went a step further and put the material into action in my own life. I started seeing real successes (shared later)from trying out the financial strategies in the course

I became a "product of the product." I tried out financial products that would be described in the course. Any time I had a bank errand, I would leave with flyers. These became part of my training toolkit. I went online and tried out various financial management tools.

I picked up various methodologies that enhanced my training. Most of the things I teach come from practical lived-out experiences, not just the perspectives in the courses. Personal experience carries conviction and opens up various ways of teaching financial education content

To cut the long story short, I started training the ILO package in 2017. In 2 years, I managed to train about 200 participants, quite commendable because this was from beneficiaries funding themselves - quite an expensive model. In 2019, face-to-face workshops dwindled.

They were becoming more expensive to run therefore less appealing to our target group. I left my mom's firm after 6 years of working with her. I wanted to train online. I had done an e-facilitation course in 2017 so I was confident I could run an online workshop.

I put together 4 of the most important topics from the standard courses. Used @canva to prepare interactive materials, recorded audios with my phone & started marketing the course. In 4 months I had trained 200 people. This had not been possible with physical workshops.

Mainly because funding was a challenge for beneficiaries and with our growing informal market, no one could spend 5 days in a workshop. But people could spare a few dollars and a session per week in a WhatsApp group for a month. It was on WhatsApp because data is also expensive!

This is when I realized I had hit the right nerve for the grassroots financially excluded market. I have not looked back since then. Other than training, I get opportunities to speak at various platforms, to write in various publications and to speak weekly on the radio.

This January, I marked 1000 people, who have gone through my curated courses under @thefinancewiz
My desire to transform lives has become a reality, although in a different format to what I initially imagined.

I have shared this story of my journey into finance (a sector I wasn't keen on) for that young person wondering how their purpose ties in with where they are right now. Sometimes, what you imagine with your life is not what happens. Have the right attitude & trust the process

You may end up in places you never even dreamed of in the first place! Trust me, at some point making tea in a home office sitting across from my mother felt like my uni years were a TOTAL waste. But nothing in life is wasted. It's part of the process to purpose

end of part 1
Possibly my longest thread today.
My next thread will look at critical financial perspectives for young people on their journey to financial success.

STAY TUNED!