The ultimate aim of Financial Literacy is to educate people to give back to society.
Giving comes in various ways. One can give money, skills, time, things and others.
When we give to good ideas, they are turned into wonderful fruits for humanity to benefit.
Giving is not only physically parting away with money but doing things that will sustain the longevity of life. When entrepreneurs build houses for rent, when they build businesses for people to work with, when they build hotels and hostels for people to lodge in, when they build hospitals to care for the sick, when they build churches and other places of worship, when they build schools for people to learn new things they are in actual fact giving and they are the true philanthropists of modern times.
Some people spend their resources producing food stuffs and fruits for others to consume. They don’t just do that because of the money they would get when they sell their farm produce, but they are giving back to society. There are people who run transport businesses and similar ones and we all patronize at least one means of transport in way one or the other and those business people should be applauded especially if they are in Ghana, because the drivers are mostly not honest and straightforward but if the transport owners were to resent on the behaviour of many drivers, there would not be a single bus on our roads. Can’t we say they too are giving back to society? They really are.
People annually donate their own blood to save the lives of others. Many a time, the donors don’t know, would know and don’t even want to know the people who would be the recipients, friends or enemies? Yet they blissfully and gladly donate blood to help save lives.
Investment products and similar products would be white elephants and nothing to buy if the true philanthropists were not to invest they money into these products before they get known to others.
All over the world, there have been generous people who have sponsored brilliant but poor students to become blessings to society. Generous people have sponsored exceptionally incredible ideas that have made the world the place to live in and they are still doing that willingly.
Orphans get ‘parents’ to cater for them and they really feel at home and they are loved and respected. Their new-found parents are real givers. If these givers were not there, orphans would have it very tough and they would curse the day they were born though they didn’t create themselves and didn’t decide to come to this world.
In advanced and civilized accountable democracies, people offer themselves to serve their countries. They give back to society in so many ways and their works are recognized.
Volunteerism has helped and moved some countries and societies to peaceful and free neighbuorhoods to live and enjoy life.
The security services we get from the police, the military and many others are great examples of human beings giving back to society. The risks involved yet they offer themselves to serve their colleague human beings.
In Financial Literacy, the lessons of risking taking and risk management are taught and when they have been learnt well and applied, we then become true and genuine givers and generous human beings.
There isn’t any being on who is useless. Everybody has something unique to give to the world and many are doing that in various ways. I believe almost all living human beings are givers. Some are very mean with giving money, but they would give you their time. Others would never give time but support you financially. Some would give you food but not money or ideas and that’s how it works one person cannot give everything. In his book the ‘ART OF WAR’, Tsu Sun (translated by Thomas Cleary), wrote ‘the brave can fight, the careful can guard, the intelligent can communicate, no one is useless.’
Receivers must always be grateful because giving is voluntary and is a personal choice. There are some people who always want to receive and sometimes even determine how much they deserve to be given even when they have not contributed in any way to the fruition of what they want. Ungrateful receivers are like dried lakes. They are like the cursed fig tree.
Financial Literacy teaches us that the real definition of money is to give. Money that is kept in your bank account without being generously doing anything greater is useless and is not money. It’s a just bank account filled with figures that are not beneficial to society, unless it has been held with an aim to pass on to others, like your children who should be taught Financial Literacy to learn how to use the money in future to multiply for society to get its share.
You have everything to give back to society. Do not tell yourself that you have nothing to give. That would be ungratefulness to your creator and a complete sign of wickedness to society. You have some spare time, give it to others, ideas, skills and others. You have money give some small percentage to the brilliant but needy students in the schools in the country. You can donate some food items and cash to the hospitals in the country. You have unbelievable skills and ideas, share with others. You have many things to give, give them out.
In his book ‘Giving’, Bill Clinton, the former American President wrote ‘giving, how each of us can change the world’
Financial Literacy uses the lesson from the Bible that ‘Give and you shall receive’.
You don’t receive before you give, because you already have everything to give unless you don’t want to.
In Financial Literacy you are taught that in your pursuit for money in this world, the ultimate is to let society benefit from your money, your ideas, your skills, your time and all that you have.
© 2010, Godwin-Xavier Ayeebo
Email: gayeebo@gmail.com
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