 My name is Cindy Oliveira. I am from South Indian Lake Manitoba. I am majoring in Native Studies and minoring in sociology. I am here to discuss in regards to the Empowering You Financial Wellness Program and the positive results that come out of it. When I first started the program and empowering you financial wellness program I was a little nervous on what was expected of time because I had to study for school. But once I came to the workshops they were actually very valuable to me. I have learned a lot of taking a couple workshops last term and a couple this term. The eating healthy on a budget was very nice. We did a we all got together and we cooked together and basically learned how to you know buy groceries on a budget which is really nice and all the students got together. So the group setting was nice and met a lot of people. It was a very positive environment. So being from the north the food is very expensive up there. So spending I think they had spent with this workshop of learning how to cook on a budget. They had spent over I think a hundred and twenty dollars but if you were to buy all that stuff up north it would have been like 300, 350. So it was really nice to know that you can actually spend such little money and have a lot of food. So that was very very valuable and I really enjoyed the managing your money as well. That has made me aware of spending habits that I had that I need to cut back from which was very useful for students like myself. Saving money little bits here and there you know cutting your coffee off every day. From my perspective indigenous education means support and community environment making you feel at home. Coming from the north it's a really tough transition from leaving your family to coming to a new place with a lot of different cultures around you and stuff. So the Mickey Sue building is one very good support for indigenous people. It's a place of home. It's comforting. It's a place to study where you meet so many students. You get to know each other. You study with each other. You talk about back home. It's very nice and warm. It's a family environment and I think it has a big effect on studying. It's you know gives you a lot more confident that other people out there just like you trying to get an education missing their family. You know trying to live on this budget and it's tough so it's nice to know other people are out there feeling the same way as you while you're trying to educate yourself to better your future and better your community because that's what we're all here for is to educate ourselves to go back home and better our communities. After having taken the program empowering you financial wellness program I would like to see this program implemented into high schools and prepare the students to come out into the world whether they're coming into the big cities for to get educated or find a job. This program is very valuable to them and it will help them budget and understand finances in the world that what they're going to be expecting to deal with as students are working in the work field. They'll be learning how to open up a bank account. A lot of people don't under don't know how to open up bank accounts because up north there's no banks so you know it will teach them how to do those things in budgeting you know student loans you know bursaries scholarships a lot of students come from the north and they don't know that there's actually such thing out there for that financial support and what this program does it teaches students of all the resources that are out there as well such as like the career workshop that we had did that was an excellent workshop um a lot of people don't even know there's career services at the university and that they can actually help you you know figure out what you want to do with your life um so this that that was very valuable with this program yeah and it would be really nice to implement this type of program into the high schools to prepare students and whether or not they want to go to work are BA students in the future.