Good People is a bi-weekly column highlighting McGill students doing community-oriented work on and around campus. Because it’s important to celebrate good people doing good things.
Many Canadian students lack the necessary knowledge to make informed and confident financial decisions. PennyDrops, Canada’s largest student-run non-profit organization dedicated to advancing financial literacy among youth, aims to change this. With an emphasis on peer-to-peer learning, university-level mentors help high school students develop financial literacy skills. Today, PennyDrops has reached nearly 30,000 high school students.
PennyDrops was founded at McGill in 2015 and has since grown into eight university chapters across the nation. I spoke with Co-Presidents Onora Nativ, a U3 student in Marketing and IT Management; and Chase Holden, a U3 student in Finance and Environment, about PennyDrops McGill. We discussed the importance of financial literacy, building community through education, and why young people need more than Google to make confident financial decisions.
This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Enid Kohler for the McGill Daily (MD): I wanted to get started by asking both of you why you got involved in PennyDrops.
Chase Holen (CH): I just really like the mission of the club. The importance of financial literacy is something that my parents brought me up with, and I think there’s a huge gap in academic curricula on this. I was really happy to see a club addressing that.
Onora Nativ (ON): I heard about Penny Drop support, and I thought they have this wonderful reach throughout the country, but also a tangible impact in the Montreal community. It extends well beyond just the school itself, which I thought was honestly incredible. Financial literacy is also very privilege-based and is specific to one’s upbringing, often limited to people who are from Canada or are familiar with how the financial system works here. I’m happy to be a part of something that breaks down those barriers.
MD: What does a week in the life of being Co-Presidents of PennyDrops look like? What are some of the concrete tasks you work on?
CH: Pretty much anything operational, it’s the two of us making everything happen. Hiring our executive team, tabling at SSMU Activities Night, and the Jaclyn Fischer Career Fair… anything we can do to spread our reach. As we progress into the year, we want to plan more events and maybe speaker panels, things like that.
ON: We also train our executives who are in contact with our teachers, making sure everyone is prepared and comfortable. That’s honestly the biggest role.
MD: I want to shift a bit more to the mission of the club. Why is it important to learn financial literacy at a young age? How would you respond to a skeptic who might doubt the importance of becoming financially literate as a kid?
ON: Firstly, I’d say that this particular perspective would come from a position of privilege if that person never had to think about what financial literacy means, or if [they believe] it’s something that feels almost innate, like it’s always been a discussion. Financial literacy is the crux of everything that we need growing up: from people who have had to take out student loans, to budgeting during school, or taking out a line of credit to get a car or a house. It’s a reality for almost every single Canadian. You really do have to be literate about the system in which you live.
CH: I absolutely agree. I also think a lot of people are like, ‘Anything I need to know, I can just Google it,’ which is only half true. If you don’t have that base level of holistic understanding of the basics, it is so intimidating.
MD: When did both of you start learning about financial literacy?
ON: Honestly, it’s always been a discussion in my household since I was very little. I’m fortunate that I asked my parents whenever I had questions about opening a TFSA, about student loans, or even about opening my bank account. But again, I recognize this is not information that I would have known otherwise.
CH: My answer is similar. My dad is kind of a nerd for this stuff. He would talk about compound interest and needing to open your TFSA as soon as you’re 18, all of that. So it’s always just been a discussion, but I recognize that that is not true for everyone.
MD: Do you have a favorite memory of your time with PennyDrops or a moment when you realized the importance or gravity of the work that you’re doing?
CH: That’s a good question. I wish I had a really distinct memory coming to mind, but what I found really impactful was teaching lessons to kids with special needs. It was such a unique experience. I’ve been a tutor before, but it felt extra impactful to reach that audience and see that we can adapt our lessons based on individual students’ needs. They were very interested and engaged; it was really special.
ON: While I was tabling this year and last year, a lot of students came up to me saying they remembered PennyDrop’s mentors coming into their high schools, and they now wanted to be a part of it, which I thought was incredibly important, knowing that the program meant enough to them when they were younger that they’d want to continue it.
MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work with PennyDrops, what does being a “good person” mean to you?
CH: For me, it’s trying to foster even more community within the club this year and more mentorship. That’s part of the lessons, too. You’ll usually wrap up the content, and then the high school students will ask you, ‘What’s university life like? What classes are you taking?’ You have that connection with them, which is so important.
ON: It’s also trying your best to level the playing field and the act of sharing your knowledge. We’re always looking to older people for mentorship. So, paying it forward any way that we can to spread the wisdom that we’ve gained, since people are always going to have questions.
Learn more about PennyDrops and opportunities to get involved on Instagram, @pennydrops.mcgill, or via pennydrops.org.
End note: If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured in this column, email news@mcgilldaily.com.