Student-led social enterprise SavY set for further success

Connor Hare

Adam received an award in 2024 for Club President of the Year

SavY’s recent inclusion in the Retirement Commission’s Financial Education Providers Advisory Group marks a significant milestone for the organisation – and confirms the value of their contribution to financial education in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Fun fact: student-led social enterprise SavY is now older than most of the high school students who benefit from its free financial workshops. Incredibly, it’s been seventeen years since founders Dipra Ray, Shiva Gopalan, Lynn Lai and Akif Malik launched the charitable trust with the support of Velocity, the student entrepreneurship programme delivered by the Business School’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) – and SavY has now become one of Velocity’s highest-achieving social enterprises.

SavY’s unique youth-led approach – the organisation recruits university students to deliver its engaging, interactive programmes – is designed to make money matters less intimidating and more relatable for rangatahi. The strategy has been highly successful: since it’s inception, Savy has provided financial literacy education to over 65,000 students.

2024 saw SavY complete 198 workshops across Auckland and Wellington, reaching approximately 4,500 students, says SavY CEO Adam Wong-Toi, a Bachelor of Arts and Science conjoint student at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland. This year, they’ve already reached another 1,400 young people – and counting. “Our goal for 2025 is to hit 250 workshops,” he adds.

But these impressive stats are not the only recent highlight for the trust. Late last year the Retirement Commissioner, Jane Wrightson, invited SavY to join the Financial Education Providers Advisory Group (FinEd PAG). The group was initially established by the Retirement Commission as an initiative within the broader framework of the National Strategy for Financial Literacy. With the government’s recent decision to embed financial education as a core element of the social sciences curriculum as well as the maths curriculum, the FinEd PAG is working alongside the Commission and the Ministry of Education to assess the scope of financial education around the country.

SavY’s inclusion in the FinEd PAG confirms their status as key players in the financial education space. “This is an incredibly significant milestone for us as a student-run organisation,” says Adam. “It doesn’t matter that we’re a group of university students – we are still delivering an important message. Being a part of the FinEd PAG shows that we are here to stay, and the work we are doing is, and can continue to be, well recognised.”

Thus far, the work has involved a wider collaboration with other financial education providers. “We’re collating feedback to enhance the offerings of all of the FinEd PAG’s programmes, in preparation for the new curricula coming over the next 24 months,” explains Adam. “Additionally, a map of the various financial education providers, their programme offerings and how their offerings align to the curriculum is being developed. This will give a better understanding of how each provider can support schools and their students.”

While the addition of financial education to the social sciences curriculum is a very new development, Adam’s enthusiastic about its potential impact. “Implementing financial education through a structured learning programme, like maths and social science curricula, exposes more students to understanding money in a more consistent way across the student body of Aotearoa New Zealand,” he explains. “Opening conversations about finances from a young age helps youth be more mindful about their future and shows them how knowledge can impact their overall financial wellbeing. With the embedding of this topic into both the maths and social sciences curricula I hope, and expect, that national levels of financial literacy will increase.”

He’s equally excited about increasing awareness of SavY’s meaningful mahi. “Getting our name out there, alongside some of the larger providers, is an exciting opportunity,” notes Adam. “Although we don’t have the same scope of programmes as other providers in the FinEd PAG, we still play an important role in the education of our rangatahi and tauira in Aotearoa New Zealand. This opportunity helps us to build further connections and grow our reach.”

There’s already a growing recognition of the value of their work, reflected in their recent success in securing more sponsorship for 2025. Pathfinder Asset Management, a KiwiSaver provider who focuses on ethical investing practices, is one of their newest sponsors. “They have helped us develop and improve our slides on investing and KiwiSaver,” says Adam. “This is an extremely valuable partnership, as it has allowed us all – facilitators, executives and school students – to learn about the importance of ethical investing and its impacts.” Non-profit charity HealthCare Plus has also come on board, providing SavY with funding support through their “Grants for Good” programme.

The SavY team of facilitators has now expanded to 100 across Auckland and Wellington. “We’re operating at a much larger scale compared to when I first joined SavY in August 2022,” observes Adam. Earlier this year they took their largest booking at a single school, running 49 workshops at Albany Junior High School. “This booking reached every single student,” says Adam. “This was a massive achievement, especially as we did this over only two weeks – so on average we had five workshops every school day for ten school days in a row.”

SavY’s continued success points to a growing awareness of the importance of financial literacy. It’s a trend that has been influenced by the current volatility in the local and global economies, suggests Adam. “With the recent economic turmoil, more and more people are having conversations about interest, CPI and the OCR, and how this is related to many aspects of life – savings, home loans, the cost of living. I think having so much about this in the media and online is helping to raise awareness,” he reflects. “Our job is to help students understand how these things affect us in the short and long term.”

And collaborating with other financial education providers as part of the FinEd PAG has underscored just how essential this job is. “It’s clear that the message from all of us in the FinEd PAG is that the work we do is extremely important,” asserts Adam. “We want to see this locked into the curriculum.” He’s excited that SavY’s inclusion in the group not only acknowledges the value of the trust’s contribution to national financial literacy, but – more importantly – empowers them to achieve even more in this space. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for us as an organisation.”