R.T. - California
We hired Bhaj to develop/present a workshop to teach financial literacy to the 4th generation of our family, the kids aged 5 to 17.
Exposing G4 members to financial literacy in a fun and engaging environment was great. The process/game of building and selling a house was terrific in that everyone in the 4th generation had opportunity to participate and provide input on how to design, build and sell a home while making a profit.
Bhaj was very collaborative to work with. In the preparation phase, we began by stating our objectives/goal for the financial literacy workshop. Bhaj was a careful listener and came back with valuable ideas. The process of designing the workshop involved back and forth discussions and it was very painless. This was the first time our family had ever sponsored any type of workshop for the younger generation.
Everybody loved the workshop! The huge highlight is that EVERYONE wanted to continue the educational sessions for 4th generation on an annual basis. Way to go!
During the workshop, the participants started to look at their fellow family members a bit differently and appreciated the connection of family at a slightly deeper level. Each 4th generation member actively participated. They made comments about things to consider while designing the house, selecting the land, building the house, getting a loan from a bank, and then going through the selling process.
The younger members appeared to have influence on what the house contained and design. The fact that younger members were active participants was very interesting in a positive way. It was also very nice that all participants were able to engage meaningfully with each other and build a type of relationship that simply would not happen without this type of facilitated workshop.
2nd and 3rd generations were really more talkative than anybody as to how great and engaging the workshop turned out to be. Each 2nd and 3rd generation member volunteered to participate in the following years’ financial literacy workshop. The 4th generation members were engaged and excited to learn about financial literacy, want to do it again and are excited to continue learning in the following year.
There’s only one thing we may change for future workshops: there was a thought to segregate the G4 members into 2 groups. This idea came up because the older G4 members are capable and would be interested in a deeper level of content that the younger G4 members would have interest or capacity to grasp or understand.
The bottom line is that the Financial Literacy Workshop was a very successful workshop and a wonderful start to what will become an annual tradition going forward at the family meeting.