Hong Kong secondary school student Agastya Rekhi is just 17, but he has been teaching finance and economics to younger children for nearly three years.
Meeting families struggling to understand how prices, investments and economic news impacted their daily lives during voluntary work convinced him that access to information was only part of the problem. How that information was communicated was just as important.
Rekhi, a finalist for the Spirit of Youth Award in this year’s Spirit of Hong Kong Awards, has since launched three student-led projects spanning financial education, simplified economic news and AI support for smaller organisations.
He started Launchpad at 14, leveraging his interests in games and art to teach economics, business and financial literacy to children. Rekhi said the project has held about 105 sessions, reaching 215 students across Hong Kong, India and the United Kingdom.