Bridging the financial education gap for high school girls

In March, we launched the Future Not Followers program, an impactful initiative which reached five schools across regional NSW, equipping high school girls with essential financial literacy skills for life.

The girls learned about goal setting and career planning, entrepreneurship and confidence, facilitating activities including mock negotiations, setting up a business and speed-networking, all designed to increase confidence and build business knowledge.

Highlighting the impact of this initiative, one girl gave the following feedback: “The bootcamp provided extremely valuable information about finance, budgeting, goal setting, etc. I am certain the information provided in this program will assist me in the near and far future and I am glad I was given the opportunity to participate.”

100% of the girls in attendance agreed that the bootcamps would help them make future decisions around subject and career choices.

Feedback showed that all the students are now more interested in learning how to manage their goals, careers and finances after completing the program. As quoted by one student “I am so excited to learn more about how I can have control over my finances, and my own business in the future, and to really get it up and running! FNF taught me some really insightful tips for everyday life, and I'm ready to look into it more now that I know both the basics and specific tools to support me.”

The Future Not Followers program was developed with funding from the NSW Government, and the pilot program was generated from Women NSW’s Council for Women’s Economic Opportunity (CWEO) and developed by our Founder and CEO Amanda Rose.