First Nations developing financial literacy

AFOA Canada (formerly the Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of Canada) is an organization dedicated to training and building a community of professionals.  Their latest endeavour is a National Aboriginal Financial Literacy On-line Survey which launched in January 2015.  They’re hoping to have 3,000 completed surveys by the beginning of April.

This national survey, a first, will allow organizers to know where to begin: ‘”We’re trying to find out what life is really like financially for our people”  explains Paulette Tremblay vice-president of Education and Training for the AFOA.

“We’re trying to find out what life is really like financially for our people” 

Paulette Tremblay,explains, “It’s about money; it’s about how you manage and how you make financial decisions.” Last year they took action. “We conducted an international literature review of indigenous financial literacy in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States”  One of the recommendations, following a review of the international situation, was that in Canada more research was necessary, according to Tremblay.

First Nations communities are becoming financially savy, and for Tremblay, education is the key. In partnership with the CPA (Certified Public Accountants of Canada) the AFOA has developed certification programs for the leadership in native communities across the country.

The ‘Certified Aboriginal Financial Manager’ (CAFM) is a 14-credit diploma, made up of 5 courses on-line, and 9 courses taken at a partnering university or college.  There are 1500 people with this certification now.  More recently the ‘Certified Aboriginal Professional Administrator’ (CAPA) was developed and now there are 42 people with this certification.

“It’s aboriginal finance and it’s aboriginal administration”

“One of the things we teach, in our CAPA and in our CAFM certification programs, is about aboriginal history and about the treaties and about all of this right, so people who take our courses love them and say that they know so much more about who they are and why their communities are the way they are, and have the knowledge and skills to operate successfully as an administrator, and once you get certified, everybody has the same certification…”

The next step is to share this financial acumen with the larger community. With almost half of Canada’s First Nations people living off-reserve, the ability to navigate financial transactions and options is a necessity in the mostly urban environments aboriginal people are living in. “What is happening now that is different is that many of our people… are making money.  We’re breaking new ground,” says Paulette Tremblay.