SHE’S not a financial consultant but a mother who simply wanted to teach her children about entrepreneurship and savings.
A simple activity Nina Othman came up with to teach her children the value of money has led to the creation of Grow the Goose, a social enterprise aimed at teaching children financial responsibility.
Nina was pregnant with her third child when two of her children, then aged 6 and 4, asked her to buy them roller shoes.
Instead of giving them what they wanted straight away, she told them they would have to help make some money to buy the shoes.
Her children suggested they sell fried chicken after watching a cartoon character do that to raise money. Nina suggested they sell healthy chicken and lamb sausages made by a friend instead.
They marketed the products on social media and the children would accompany their father to deliver the orders. After two weeks of this, they made enough money to buy the rollers shoes.
Word of mouth spread far and wide and Nina was soon inundated with queries from other parents.
“They generally wanted to know two things: one, how they could get their children to sell sausages and two, how to teach children financial responsibility.
Nina wasn’t interested in the sausage business as it was just a means to an end — to teach her children about delayed gratification and to understand that they had to work hard to get what they wanted — but she was interested in helping other children learn about entrepreneurship and savings. And thus Grow the Goose was born.
HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE NAME ‘GROW THE GOOSE’?
I liked the Aesop’s fable The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg, which teaches a good lesson about avoiding unprofitable action motivated by greed. But I don’t like how the story ended — the goose gets killed.
So, instead of killing the goose, I think we should grow the goose so that it can continue to lay more golden eggs for us. By changing the title of the story and the ending of the story, I’m also telling children that they have control over their own individual stories; that they can change a bad ending to a good one.
PRIOR TO FOUNDING GROW THE GOOSE, WHAT DID YOU DO?
I was involved in many different start-up businesses, including a baking studio, a photo studio, a video production house, a premium gifts company and a children’s party planning business.
WOULD YOU SAY YOU’RE A SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR?
I’d say I’m more of an entrepreneur wannabe. I wanted to do many things and I failed many times. But this time, I’ve finally got it right.
GROW THE GOOSE TEACHES CHILDREN ABOUT ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ABOUT SAVINGS. WHICH OF THE TWO IS MORE IMPORTANT?
That’s really hard to say. In general I’d say both are equally important but in some context, one could be more important.
For example, with Orang Asli children, they don’t have money to save in the first place. So for them, it’s more about making money. But for children from very well-to-do families, making money isn’t as impor¬tant as spending wisely and developing a regular savings habit.
IN WHAT WAY IS GROW THE GOOSE A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE?
We didn’t start out as a social enterprise. At first it was just a commercial business aimed at making a profit. But later, I got to know an amazing social entrepreneur named Anja Juliah Abu Bakar and I realised this is what I really wanted to do.
So I did more research, I joined the Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre’s (MaGIC) social entrepreneurship programme and I even went to Sweden to attend a social enterprise outreach programme.
Today, we still have our programme for paying customers but we also do a lot of these programmes for underprivileged children.
SO, YOU WORK WITH ORPHANS AND CHILDREN FROM SHELTERS?
Yes. We do some work with Orang Asli children too. But the children whom I’m most passionate about are the “stateless” children — children born in Malaysia but for some reason or another, do not have identity cards and are not considered citizens. They can’t even open a bank account because they don’t have ICs. Hopefully the new government will do something about this and help to solve the problem of stateless children because they’re in a dire condition.
HOW BIG IS YOUR TEAM?
In-house, there are only four people. It’s a small team. But we’re planning to license our programme — it’s something we plan to launch after Hari Raya. This will allow our programme to have a much wider reach. It will be available to individual freelancers and also to tuition centres and even corporations. Basically to whoever loves children and wants them to learn about being responsible with money.
IS YOUR PROGRAMME AVAILABLE ONLINE?
Right now, it’s all offline workshops but we’re planning to launch an online learning platform next year. So those who can’t attend our workshops in person can still learn from our modules.
DO YOU ANTICIPATE IT WILL ALL BE ONLINE IN THE FUTURE?
Online is important but I feel there’s always got to be that human touch. That’s why where possible, we still prefer to hold live workshops. Our licensing model will allow us to have a wider reach and yet have that human touch. I think that’s very important.