Last week in Toronto, the Indigenous Prosperity Foundation delivered Money Smarts Facilitator Training to Bears’ Lair camp teams, preparing them to deliver hands-on, experiential financial learning in youth camps across Canada.
This training focused on more than curriculum delivery. It centred on how young people learn best through play, storytelling, conversation, and connection, and how financial literacy comes alive when youth are invited to engage, imagine, and explore together.
Learning Through Experience and Relationship
Bears’ Lair camps are vibrant spaces where Indigenous youth build confidence, form friendships, and explore their ideas through creativity and entrepreneurship. By integrating Money Smarts into these camps, financial learning becomes part of a broader, immersive experience that is interactive, relational, and fun.
Through the Money Smarts game and activity-based curriculum, facilitators learned to guide youth through real-life scenarios, decision-making challenges, and collaborative problem-solving. Youth engage in dynamic learning experiences that reflect everyday choices and future possibilities, helping them connect financial concepts to their own lives, dreams, and goals.
Building Confidence and Possibility
When youth learn through play and dialogue, financial education becomes approachable, meaningful, and empowering. Money Smarts supports young people in building confidence, strengthening communication skills, and developing practical money knowledge in ways that feel relevant and engaging.
These experiences often spark new ways of thinking about independence, entrepreneurship, and future opportunities. With guidance from trained Bears’ Lair facilitators, youth are supported not only in understanding money but also in envisioning what is possible for themselves and their communities.
Strengthening Camp Experiences Across Canada
This training equips Bears’ Lair teams to deliver consistent, high-quality Money Smarts programming across their camps, expanding access to financial learning in spaces where youth already feel inspired, supported, and connected.
Together, IPF and Bears’ Lair are creating learning environments where financial literacy is woven naturally into camp life through games, group challenges, reflection, and shared discovery.
Looking Ahead
As facilitators bring Money Smarts into camps across the country, we look forward to seeing youth engage with financial learning in ways that feel joyful, empowering, and community-centred. This collaboration reflects a shared belief that when young people are supported through experience, relationship, and play, they build the confidence and skills to carry opportunity forward into every part of their lives.
Interested in bringing hands-on financial learning to your school, program, or community?
Become a Money Smarts Facilitator
Help guide youth through experiential, game-based financial learning.
Explore our interactive financial literacy game designed to build confidence through play.
→ Money Smarts
Learn more about Bears’ Lair Dream Camps
Discover how camps inspire Indigenous youth through creativity, entrepreneurship, and confidence-building.
→ Bears Lair Dream Camps