Teaching Money Matters: Financial Literacy Lessons Reach the Women of Batu

In a modest room in Dusun Batu Tumpeng, a hamlet within Desa Jagaraga Indah, West Lombok, a group of women sit in a loose circle on the floor, notebooks and pens in hand. At the front, a university student — not a banker, not a financial consultant, just a KKP (Kuliah Kerja Partisipatif) participant from UIN Mataram — walks them through the basics of managing household money. This is Sekolah PKH, short for Program Keluarga Harapan, or the Family Hope Program, and for a few weeks this middle of 2026, it also became an unexpected classroom for financial literacy.

From Passive Participants to Presenters

PKH itself is a long-running national social assistance program, typically associated with cash transfers to low-income families. But in Jagaraga Indah, the KKP students' involvement went further than simply attending. According to their weekly reports, students moved from being participants in PKH sessions during their early weeks to actively serving as pemateri — presenters — by the program's second week, standing in front of the very women the sessions were designed to support.

One student's report from the second week describes joining a PKH class in Batu Tumpeng and personally delivering material on pengelolaan uang, or money management. It was not a one-time appearance either; PKH sessions in Batu Tumpeng recurred through the following weeks, with students continuing to support the sessions as both participants and facilitators, eventually being formally acknowledged as having served in a presenting role for the program.

Why Household Finance, Why Here

It is worth pausing on why this subject matters in a village setting like Jagaraga Indah. PKH households are, by definition, families navigating tighter economic margins — recipients of a program built around social assistance. Teaching financial literacy to this specific audience is not about abstract budgeting theory; it is about making limited resources stretch further, understanding where money goes, and building small habits of planning rather than reacting.

For young university students, many of whom are still building their own financial understanding, taking on the role of financial educator is no small task. Yet the reports describe this responsibility matter-of-factly, folded into an already packed schedule of teaching at schools, cleaning shared spaces, and running errands for the posko kitchen. Financial literacy sessions were simply one more commitment layered onto an already full week of community engagement.

A Program That Kept Returning

What distinguishes the PKH sessions from a single, isolated workshop is their repetition. Across the students' reports, Batu Tumpeng's PKH activities surface again and again — not as a one-off socialization event, but as a recurring engagement that continued into the students' plans for the weeks ahead. By the final week documented, 'berpartisipasi sebagai pemateri di sekolah PKH' (participating as a presenter at PKH school) still appeared on the list of planned activities, suggesting the relationship between the students and this group of women was ongoing rather than concluded.

Photographic documentation from the sessions shows women seated together, papers and materials laid out before them, listening as one of the students presents. It is an unremarkable scene by most standards — no stage, no projector, no formal setting — but it captures something meaningful: financial education delivered not from a distance, but sitting on the same floor, in the same room, as the people it was meant to serve.

Small Lessons, Longer Reach

Financial literacy socialization rarely makes headlines. It lacks the visual drama of a clean-up campaign or the warmth of a classroom full of children. But for families balancing tight budgets, a clear explanation of how to manage money can carry weight well beyond the room where it was taught. In Jagaraga Indah, that lesson was delivered not by an outside expert flown in for a single session, but by university students who kept showing up, week after week, to sit on the same floor and talk about something as ordinary — and as essential — as household finance.

Batung Tumpeng Housewives & KKP's Member