THE Riyali Financial Literacy Program, developed by SEDCO Holding Group, endeavors to continuously achieve a high standard of success in financial literacy and enrich the students’ financial literacy skills. Since its launch in 2012, the program aspires to raise the society’s awareness about financial issues and to change their resolve towards it in order to develop the society economically and socially.
Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Responsibility at SEDCO Holding Group, Amr Banaja stated: “The program seeks to improve the happiness, the quality of life and health of its beneficiaries. In hopes of insuring the success of the program and achieving its objectives, we have identified through comparative surveys the extent of change in behavior and skills related to financial awareness.”
He also added: “From the results of the program, we can conclude that it reflects positively in changing stu-dents’ perspective and attitude. Studies have shown that the effectiveness and the impact on attitude and be-havior could reach 72%. The study was based on the skills and attitudes pertaining to saving, budgeting, borrowing and investment.
“It was shown that the program’s graduates have 32% better understanding and awareness in their spending than those who did not undergo the training. As for their attitude and their behavior, the program’s gradu-ates had 53% better budgeting and financial planning skills. The scientific evidence of the research proves that the program can have a strong impact on understanding and awareness. It can reach up to 72% in terms of attitude towards investment and 50% towards saving.”
The Riyali Financial Literacy Program has so far been implemented in 22 cities, with over 100,000 benefi-ciaries and 1,150 ambassadors who contributed to the training sessions. The results and findings of the nur-tured skills by Riyali showed great progress among the graduates with regards to the importance of savings, reducing the dependency on borrowing, the toned to grow investment opportunities, and an overall well rounded awareness towards managing money. The study consisted of 60% girls and 40% of boys aged be-tween 18 and 23.
‘Riyali’ was launched in 2012 and aims to familiarize members of the community with financial planning and management in order to meet their personal financial responsibilities. ‘Riyali’ aims to educate kids and Saudi youth on financial concepts such as planning, budgeting, saving, investing and borrowing in order to empower them with the personal financial skills required to achieve a desirable standard of living. The pro-gram most recently won the Saudi CSR Summit Community Development Award in 2014 and the Makkah Award for Excellence in 2012. — SG
