The Smart Investor Program concluded its summer activities for this year by participating in Aramco’s summer festival in Riyadh and Jeddah. The program is a community program prepared by the Capital Market Authority to educate and spread the awareness among the youth in regard to the positive ways to deal with the daily financial transactions and saving skills.
The Smart Investor City was an idea proposed by the program. It aims to teach children the difference between banks’ products, services, currency, and the capital market. The city also takes them in a journey through the history of the Saudi currency (Riyal) and how it developed and what are its categories. As for the skills’ side, the financial instructor at the city would explain the methods and skills of saving and the best mechanisms to optimize the use of a piggy bank. The city consists of four routes or tracks where visitors learn by passing through each one.
The journey starts at The Capital Market Route where visitors will watch a 3-minutes presentation explaining the meaning of a bank and a capital market. It would also explain several terms related to those topics such as: company, shareholder, trading, stock and brokerage. After that, the instructor would lead them to the Riyals Route. This route includes seven informative boards telling the Riyal’s story and how did it develop and what are the categories of the Saudi currency. Later, visitors will be led to the Savings Route where they would learn about piggy banks, how to use them and how they are considered the most important mean of saving. Finally, the journey ends at the Mobily Route where it would shed the light on the best ways to save in mobile phone bills and the optimal use for mobile phones as a first step towards saving.
The visitors of this year’s Aramco summer festival in Riyadh reached 530,000 visitors in 28 days whereas the booth of the Smart Investor city was visited by 18200 kids during the same period. In Jeddah, the visitors of the Aramco summer festival reached 566,000 kids in 32 days where as the Smart Investor booth was visited by 16000 during the same period. As many as 34200 Smart Investor magazines were distributed in total.
On the other hand, the Smart Investor caravan concluded its first round on the Kingdom’s regions which included Al-Ahsa, Al-Kharj, Al-Qassim and Hail. This caravan is considered one of the awareness units of the Smart Investor program. It included a studio equipped with all the necessary tools and stationary for the kids to draw as well as some designed drawings with messages related to daily financial transactions. The caravan also included a library full of the Smart Investor magazines for the kids to read as well as a number of interactive screens with interactive electronic and video games.
In Al-Ahsa, the “Smart Investor” participated in a festival entitled “Farhat Hasana”, organized by Prince Sultan Rehabilitation Complex (Eastern Province Society for Disabled Persons) in cooperation with Al-Ahsa Municipality.
In Al-Kahrj, the Smart Investor caravan participated in Al-Kharj’s Summer Festival at Al Hudaithi Mall. As for Al-Qassim, the Smart Investor caravan was in King Khalid Center’s Park in Buraydah. A huge crowd visited the caravan and participated in its activities. The caravan ended its journey in Hail where it was open to visitors at the Garden Mall and Prince Saud Park. The total visitors of the caravan in its first round reached 9500 and around 6600 kids benefitted from this activity and received the Smart Investor magazine.
The caravan will soon continue its journey all around the kingdom and the dates will be announced to the public on the official smart Investor website www.smart-investor.net or through its social media pages on Facebook or twitter.
On another level, preparations are underway to launch a special play for kids titled (the Saving Heroes). The national day will be its launch date. It is a musical that aims to teach children the basics of daily financial transactions and savings and also instill the ethical principles of Islamic teachings in financial transactions. It is important to note that the Smart Investor Program is sponsored this year by Mobily as part of it social responsibility programs. The program is organized and implemented by a group of Saudi nationals that are specialized in financial awareness.
