Our Work: Financial Education
What is Financial Education?
Financial literacy levels are low among low-income households. Financial education addresses this weakness by empowering the poor to make wise financial decisions. It teaches people how to save more, spend less, borrow prudently, and manage their debt with discipline. It can help more experienced learners understand an array of financial services from money transfers to insurance.
Financial education is not a new idea. In wealthy countries, it is an integral part of civic education. But in the developing world where poor families need basic money management skills to stay ahead of the next crisis, such training is scarce.
In the context of microfinance and microenterprise development, financial education is the next training frontier. Overlooked for decades, it is the precursor to the more common business skills training. It is broader in scope and more relevant to a wider range of learners—indeed anyone who makes decisions about money and finances.
What is the Global Financial Education Program?
Global Financial Education Program is the first large-scale, global program targeted at those just above and below the poverty line in developing countries. It is led by Microfinance Opportunities and funded by the Citi foundation. The core curriculum was developed with the help of Freedom from Hunger. Global Financial Education Program develops curriculum targeted to low income households and trains a broad range of service organizations to use it. To date, it has produced the following five core modules:
- Budgeting: Use Money Wisely
- Debt Management: Handle With Care
- Savings: You Can Do It!
- Bank Services: Know Your Options
- Financial Negotiations: Communicate With Confidence
and four specialized modules:
- Young People: Your Future, Your Money
- Remittances: Make the Most of Them
- Risk Management and Insurance: Protect Your Family's Future
- Consumer Protection: Balancing Rights and Responsibilities
These topics were selected in response to demand identified by seven NGOs in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. For each modules, the curriculum offers:
- A trainer's guide with step-by-step instructions for facilitating each learning session
- A training of trainer's manual to prepare financial education trainers
- A content note that provides a basic overview of the topic
What Now and What Next?
Global Financial Education Program now focuses on three main activities: 1) dissemininating its curriculum around the globe through training of trainers events and technical assistance 2) developing new curricula; and 3) measuring outcomes of financial education programs.
Since 2006, the Global Financial Education Program has disseminated its curriculum through training of trainer events in five regions (Latin America, Southeast Asia, Central America, Middle East, North Africa), and eight countries (Philippines, Russia, Uganda, Pakistan, India, Brazil, Colombia and China). The program now includes a network of more than 180 organizations with 300 trainers in 37 countries around the world. As a result of the capacity building provided by the Global Financial Education Program, partners have now conducted participatory-based trainings for more than 125,000 people. In addition, over 6.7 million people have been exposed to Global Financial Education Program messages through radio and print media, music, dance and drama and other awareness-raising approaches.
Global Financial Education Program is currently developing new curricula on the topics of risk management and insurance, remittances, youth, consumer protection and electronic banking. Microfinance Opportunities and The MasterCard Foundation launched a three-year program for financial education for branchless banking in December 2009.
Moving forward, the Global Financial Education Program will focus on scalability of financial education. Microfinance Opportunities is giving close attention to the use of media and other delivery channels to disseminate financial education on a large scale.
To learn more, please visit the Global Financial Education Program's website at www.globalfinancialed.org. |
