Speaking at the recent Citi-SMU symposium on financial literacy for young adults, Steve Korris, quality and training director of UK charity My Bnk, said that for a programme to be relevant and meet the needs of young people, activities have to be centred on what the youth want, and not what adults think best. My Bnk runs finance and enterprise programmes for youths aged 11 to 25. Similarly, the Citi-SMU Financial Literacy Programme for Young Adults recruits students as trainers. Started in 2012, the programme adopted a train-the-trainers approach, where students undergo 10 to 12 weeks of training on the content to be taught and the teaching process. "Being in a university, the first thing you think about is what type of resources you can put to bear – and one of the most valuable assets we have is really our students," said Associate Professor of Finance Jeremy Goh, who runs the programme with Associate Dean of the SMU Lee Kong Chian School of Business and Professor of Finance Benedict Koh. Ideally, Prof Koh said, the student trainers should be in their third year, when they have accumulated more financial knowledge and taken some finance classes.