SDA Church holds financial literacy training for members, others

As part of its contributions towards poverty reduction and wealth creation, the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Church is organizing a week-long financial literacy training for its members as well as members of the general public in Sunyani.

Participants include people who are already into small, micro and macro businesses as well as those without any job at all and are being taken through topics such as moral poverty, religious poverty, education poverty, health poverty and economic poverty as types of poverty and their impacts.

Other areas being treated are principles of success, management of primary resources, money as a seed from fruit, consumption and investment, how to spend money, the power of coins and the impact of poverty.

The ongoing programme, which is taking place at the Victory in Christ SDA church in Sunyani is on the theme: "Poverty is not in the pocket, but a disease of the mind: poverty in the pocket is curable.”

Dubbed "Wealth Creation Seminar”, the initiative was introduced in 2015 and is being held nationwide with the aim of totally eradicating poverty, especially among members of the church.

Mindset

Elder Peter Ansong Frempong, a Financial Literacy Consultant and an elder of the church, told the media in an interview on the sidelines of the event that "we want to train the people's mind to understand their current economic status and how they can overcome the state of where they are today."

He explained that the training seeks to impact entrepreneurship, skills, knowledge, financial literacy education and wealth creation attitudes in participants.

In his opinion, “poverty is the lack of basic ideas, discipline and the commitment to implement ideas in order to create sustainable wealth for one’s needs and inheritance of life."

Elder Frempong, also an educationist, agri-businesses expert and agro-scientist said the programme would go a long way to sensitize and preach to the youth the way out of poverty through the sharing of ideas to create opportunities and wealth so they would not indulge in money rituals, corruption and dubious means of making money.

Spiritual & physical needs

Elder Frempong again stated the SDA church has trained a team of experts in wealth creation and financial literacy who are also entrepreneurs to complement the spiritual work of the church with social development.

He said the church serves not only its members but the general humanity including other religious bodies and public institutions.

Pastor Thomas Akosah, the Head pastor of the Victory in Christ SDA church also said the church was ensuring a cohesive and serene environment for universal economic growth and sustainability of the community.

He said the initiative would significantly contribute to crime reduction in society saying; “all day praying and fastening would not address economic challenges of members without any action afterwards.”