Empowering Gen Z Migrants Through Financial Literacy

As a co-founder of South Sudanese Australian Youth United, a non-for-profit organisation that focuses on empowering young people to be independently capable of leading meaningful lives, Deng Yong Deng astutely understands that young people of migrant backgrounds struggle to contribute to, and participate equally in, Australia’s economic success.

Empowering Gen Z migrants through financial literacy is the strategic issue that Yong, an inaugural MF Fellowship recipient, is raising at this Melbourne Forum Fellowship Roundtable.

The questions being asked and the solutions to explore are:

How do we empower Gen Z individuals (ages of 17-21 years) from migrant backgrounds to be independently capable of contributing to an advancing global economy?

Is it possible to make financial literacy a common household language?

What is needed to produce highly driven and visionary financial leaders of tomorrow that will advance our economy?

Is the solution to develop a financial literacy course that targets their life-stage, employment or entrepreneurial backgrounds and future needs?

What will attract and engage these individuals to participate?

What are the options and alternatives?

Can such a program scale and automate?

In a relaxed, intimate format, the conversation will draw on the diverse expertise of select members who can bring to the discussion their knowledge and experience of the strategic issue, supportively challenge or test assumptions, spark new ideas and point the way for potential actions.

Under Chatham House rule and with the intent to learn, a Fellowship Roundtable is a development journey for all in the room.

Yong was born in South Sudan, but his family fled to Kenya, after his father was killed in the civil war. Yong’s family became refugees and spent almost 16 years in the Kakuma refugee camp before relocating to Melbourne in June 2009.

He came to know about medicine through its absence. In the camp, as a child, he constantly witnessed family, relatives and community members lose their lives to diseases that are curable. He survived by chance after contracting whooping cough at the age of 2 weeks old however, his younger sister died of whooping cough at the age of 6 months old!

Lack of access to proper healthcare became a driving force to his passion in pursuing a career in healthcare. Determined to pursue a career in Medicine, things were not as easy as he thought when he was going through VCE! Faced with housing issues, challenges of a new country and a new culture, the teenaged Yong struggled to navigate Australia’s education system. It was until pharmacy school that Yong met Nick, his first Australian mentor. Through mentorship, Yong was able to thrive as a clinical pharmacist and continuously build on his leadership skills. He completed the 2021 Williamson Leadership Program with Leadership Victoria. Today he is studying medicine with the aim to practice in regional Victoria.

Yong is a big believer of ‘paying it forward’ because if it wasn’t for others who paved the way for him, he wouldn’t be remotely close to where he is today.

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