BHB Smart Investor program concludes

Manama, Apr. 23 (BNA): The 2018-2019 Smart Investor Program, organized by Bahrain Bourse (BHB) in collaboration with INJAZ Bahrain, was concluded with a visit of 150 students from 61 participating schools. The event took place with the attendance of the Chief Executive Officer of Bahrain Bourse, Assistant Undersecretary for General & Technical Education at the Ministry of Education Latifa Bunudha along with officials from INJAZ Bahrain and school coordinators. During the event, students were introduced to various concepts related to the content covered during the past six months, with the aim of ensuring and reinforcing the understanding of students to the concepts learned. Various activities focusing on the importance of money and saving, critical thinking, analysing and specifying, emotional intelligence, empathy, and collaboration. On this occasion, Shaikh Khalifa bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, Chief Executive Officer of Bahrain Bourse, commented: "The Smart Investor program is a national program aimed at equipping youngsters at the elementary level with key financial literacy skills and knowledge. The program comes as a collective effort from Ministry of Education, INJAZ Bahrain, and various sponsoring entities whom share a common objective, educating the youth with core financial literacy skills at an early age. "The program aims to motivate school students to acquire simple financial literacy concepts and also enhance their financial awareness in order to instil core life skills at an early age leading to sound financial decisions in the future. Our long-term objective is to enhance the level of financial literacy penetration amongst the youth (under 18 years)," added Shaikh Khalifa. Commenting on the successful implementation of the program and its tremendous student reach, Hana Sarwani, the Executive Director of INJAZ Bahrain commented, "This programs provides the students with the opportunity to learn the importance of money management and financial planning to be able to make sound economic choices as youngster. INJAZ Bahrain is very pleased to have impacted more than 5000 students in the first year of implementation. We are grateful to Bahrain Bourse, Ministry of Education, educators and schools who have shared our mission in enhancing financial literacy knowledge in students across Bahrain. We are positive that with this partnership we will be able to reach out to even more students in the years to come." The Smart Investor Program was officially launched in September 2018. The Program consists of 7 themed sessions designed to equip students with the following concepts: Thinking, Specifying, Planning, Execution, Saving, Progression, and Evaluation. Participating students receive a magazine which includes comics and hands-on exercises on the abovementioned concepts. During the 2018-2019 academic year, the Smart Investor program has been implemented across 76 schools, 212 classes, with the support extended form 212 educators targeting more than 5500 students within Grade 4 elementary level. Bahrain Bourse thanked the Ministry of Education for the support extended to ensure the successful implementation of the Smart Investor program as well as the following institutions who have sponsored the ‘Smart Investor’ program for the academic year 2018-2019 in the aim of spreading financial knowledge across the youth: Strategic sponsors include: Labour Fund (Tamkeen). Gold Sponsors included: GPIC. Silver sponsors include: Bahrain Islamic Bank, BBK, Ithmaar Bank, and National Bank of Bahrain.