Ghana
Introduction
More than fifty young people gathered at Bimbagu Catholic Church on 29 August 2026 for a programme that treated financial responsibility as seriously as spiritual formation. Moses Laar Dola, the church's Youth Chairman, organized the Church Youth Financial Literacy Programme under the theme Building Financially Responsible and Empowered Young People, working from a conviction that budgeting, saving, and responsible money management belong alongside spiritual and academic growth as essential parts of a young person's development, not as separate, secular concerns disconnected from the church's broader mission.
Eight Objectives Rooted in One Belief
Dola built the programme around eight interconnected objectives, each addressing a distinct dimension of financial capability. He wanted participants to understand why financial literacy matters in the first place, to grasp budgeting and responsible spending, and to develop a genuine culture of saving regardless of how much income they currently had access to. He introduced basic investment and entrepreneurship principles, addressed responsible borrowing and debt management, and promoted safe, careful use of digital financial services, an increasingly unavoidable part of how young people now handle money.
Beyond these more conventional financial literacy goals, Dola pushed participants to set realistic short and long term financial goals, and, distinctively, to connect financial responsibility directly to Christian values, stewardship, discipline, honesty, and accountability. This final objective set the programme apart from a purely secular financial literacy session, framing sound money management not simply as a practical skill, but as an expression of values the participants likely already held central to their faith.
Six Topics Building Toward Genuine Capability
The programme moved systematically through six core areas. Budgeting was introduced as a tool for planning how money is earned, spent, and saved, with particular emphasis on distinguishing needs from wants and prioritizing essential expenses accordingly. Saving followed, with Dola stressing the importance of consistency over amount, encouraging participants to establish specific savings goals rather than allowing income to disappear into unplanned spending.
Investing was introduced at a foundational level, drawing a clear distinction between saving and investing while emphasizing the importance of understanding risk and seeking reliable information before committing money to any investment decision. Entrepreneurship followed as a natural extension of this financial foundation, with Dola encouraging participants to view starting a business as one legitimate pathway to income, covering practical elements including identifying opportunities, managing expenses, pricing, record keeping, and understanding profit.
Debt management addressed the real financial consequences of borrowing, particularly when interest and repayment obligations are not fully understood before a loan is taken. The programme closed its core content with digital finance, highlighting the growing role of mobile money and digital banking in young people's financial lives, and encouraging responsible use of these tools alongside careful protection of personal financial information.
Learning Built Around Doing, Not Just Listening
Dola structured the programme around active participation rather than passive instruction. Group discussions, practical budgeting exercises, needs versus wants activities, savings goal exercises, entrepreneurship discussions, question and answer sessions, and personal financial goal setting all featured throughout the day. Participants were encouraged to share their own experiences and challenges with money management directly, a choice that made the programme genuinely interactive rather than a one directional presentation delivered to a passive audience.
Understanding That Took Root Across the Group
By the programme's conclusion, participants demonstrated clear gains across a wide range of financial competencies. They showed increased understanding of how to prepare a simple personal budget, why saving regularly matters, and how to distinguish needs from wants as well as saving from investing. They grasped the risks tied to unnecessary debt, absorbed basic entrepreneurship principles, and came away with a stronger sense of how to use digital financial services responsibly. Perhaps most encouraging, participants left with a clearer understanding of why setting financial goals matters in the first place, and expressed genuine interest in continuing financial literacy activities within the church youth group going forward, a sign that the programme's impact was not confined to the single day of its delivery.
Honesty About What Made the Work Difficult
Dola's report reflects genuine honesty about the challenges the programme encountered. Participants arrived with widely varying levels of prior financial knowledge and experience, making it difficult to pitch every topic at a level equally accessible to everyone in the room. Time for practical exercises proved limited given the breadth of material covered, and accessing reliable financial information to support the discussion presented its own difficulty. Underlying much of this was a more fundamental constraint, many young participants had limited personal income to begin with, a reality that shaped how directly some of the saving and investment guidance could be applied to their immediate circumstances.
Naming these challenges directly, rather than glossing over them, strengthens rather than weakens the programme's credibility, offering a realistic account of what large scale, mixed experience financial literacy outreach genuinely involves.
A Roadmap for What Comes Next
Rather than treating the programme as a single, self contained event, Dola outlined a clear set of recommendations for sustaining and deepening its impact. He proposed making financial literacy a regular youth activity rather than a one time programme, organizing quarterly financial education sessions to reinforce learning over time, and establishing a youth savings initiative with proper accountability structures in place. He recommended inviting qualified financial professionals and entrepreneurs to mentor young people directly, introducing more hands on entrepreneurship activities, and providing participants with simple, accessible budgeting and financial planning tools they could use independently.
He also called for continued emphasis on responsible digital financial practices, and, returning to the programme's foundational framing, recommended explicitly linking financial literacy with Christian teachings on stewardship and the responsible management of resources, ensuring future sessions continue to root financial guidance within values the youth group already holds central.
Financial Literacy as Part of a Fuller Formation
What distinguishes Dola's approach as a youth leader is his refusal to treat financial literacy as separate from the broader formation the church already provides. By positioning budgeting, saving, and responsible money management alongside spiritual, academic, and leadership development, rather than as a standalone secular add on, he gave the programme a framing likely to resonate more deeply with participants already engaged in the church's broader mission. Stewardship is not simply a financial term borrowed for convenience within this programme, it is a value already meaningful to the young people in the room, repurposed here to anchor practical lessons about budgeting and saving in language they already understood and valued.
As Dola looks toward expanding this work, the programme at Bimbagu Catholic Church stands as a clear example of how faith based youth institutions can serve as powerful platforms for financial literacy outreach, reaching large numbers of young people within a setting already built on trust, consistency, and shared values.
Report Summary
Moses Laar Dola, Youth Chairman at Bimbagu Catholic Church, organized a Church Youth Financial Literacy Programme on 29 August 2026 under the theme Building Financially Responsible and Empowered Young People, reaching over fifty youth participants. The programme covered budgeting, saving, investing, entrepreneurship, debt management, and digital finance, delivered through interactive activities including group discussions, practical budgeting exercises, and personal financial goal setting, while explicitly connecting financial responsibility to Christian values of stewardship, discipline, honesty, and accountability. Participants demonstrated increased understanding across all core topics and expressed interest in continuing financial literacy activities within the youth group. Dola identified challenges including varying levels of prior financial knowledge, limited time for practical exercises, and limited personal income among some participants, and proposed recommendations including regular quarterly sessions, a youth savings initiative, mentorship from financial professionals, and continued integration of financial literacy with the church's teachings on stewardship. The programme was recommended for continuation and expansion to reach more young people within the church and wider community.
