Empowering students to become leaders

Today's students can take a crucial leadership role in the modern world. Their skills, energy and enthusiasm, combined with their desire to achieve, make them ideal people to work with local communities, according to John J. Studzinski, head of HSBC Corporate, Investment Banking and Markets.

Mr Studzinski was speaking to students during a Young Enterprise and Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) training seminar on Tuesday.

Mr Studzinski, who was in Malta to attend the Commonwealth Business Forum, said students represent hope in a world where failures in leadership, stagnation in the political arena and ethical malaise in the business fora can be witnessed in many parts of the world.

He said students represent the cutting edge for a new kind of leadership - the next generation with moral fibre within a global framework.

The aim of HSBC, which funds the two organisations on an international level, is to help people create businesses, help them save and provide financial services, he said. He said that in doing this, one should keep in mind five broad areas of financial literacy: you don't get something for nothing; recognise your risks; understand your funding choices; prepare a plan; know your rights and responsibilities.

This checklist is "deceptively simple but fraught with danger for those who are not financially literate. And simple though they sound, they hide rich and subtle thinking under the surface.

"To get these subtleties across, you have to teach people well. Of course, you are not teaching these things to people in a vacuum. Everyone comes on this planet with baggage. They come with their own attitudes to money and finance. And these attitudes, whether they come out of the culture, the family or the peer group, determine behaviour. They might be rooted in fear or greed as well as ignorance. So you may need to challenge and change the attitudes to change the behaviour."

The training event was organised by SIFE, for students at the Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy at the University of Malta and those at Business and Commerce at MCAST, as well as Young Enterprise students in the first year of post secondary school.

Both SIFE and Young Enterprise encouraging a spirit of entrepreneurship among young people in different ways. The former, a US organisation established in 1975 which has expanded into every region in the world, is focused on encouraging students to set up projects which encourage financial literacy in their own communities and help them take control of their own finances. On the other hand, Young Enterprise students set up their own business and gain the practical experience, which entails dealing with customers and suppliers, becoming familiar with VAT and corporation tax, and reporting to shareholders, among other things.

Last month, Mr Studzinski attended the HSBC Financial Literacy Forum in Toronto, Canada. It was attended by 100 university students involved with financial education through SIFE in 27 countries. Malta was represented by MCAST student Daniel Bonnici who was accompanied by faculty advisor Jonathan Sammut. Their purpose was to gain knowledge and experience about what is going on in the world of SIFE abroad, and how other projects from different countries were presented and awarded. The forum brought together participants from Africa, Asia and Central Asia, The Americas, and Europe.

Both Young Enterprise and SIFE teach important lessons such as time management, teamwork and planning, which are useful skills that help a student not only in the setting up and running a business but in whatever job he/she undertakes.

Educational programmes like SIFE and Young Enterprise provide education and experience - two powerful tools to empower young persons become a catalyst for themselves and for their communities. Therefore the experience does not stop at achieving a good literacy level but at spreading the education to other people.

A word of advice was given quoting Irish playwright and political campaigner, George Bernard Shaw, the only person to win both the Nobel Prize and an Oscar. Mr Studzinski quoted: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." He challenged students to reach and achieve more than one would have ever thought possible, and as leaders, to make the world a different place.