By Julie Lee | October 29, 2014
Six months ago, Hussein was just trying to get by. In a country where almost 40% of young people are unemployed, Hussein’s income was limited and sporadic. “I didn’t know how to manage,” he says.
Today Hussein plans ahead. “Now I only need 10 dinars [approximately 6 USD] to spend for the whole week,” he says with pride.
Hussein attended a 2-day financial education training workshop led by the Center of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR), back in May. He learned how to get control of his expenses, plan in advance–“even for my small income”–, and write out a monthly budget. The training was based on Microfinance Opportunities (MFO)’s global financial education curriculum.
“People [in my community] thought I was crazy,” he recalls, for creating a budget to manage so little income. But Hussein stuck with his budget, which has helped him through tough times. Hussein earns a regular salary now, and continues to budget to this day.
Hussein is just one of CAWTAR’s beneficiaries who have felt the benefits of financial education while struggling to make ends meet in Tunisia with irregular income and few job opportunities. In a region plagued with high unemployment among youth, but at the same time experiencing rapid growth in microfinance, financial education is important now more than ever. CAWTAR sees the demand for financial education among the groups that it works with–civil society NGOs and MFIs. It has conducted several financial education trainings earlier this year, but the participants say that it is not enough and they want more.
To reach more people, MFO is working jointly with CAWTAR to develop an e-learning program for financial education targeting women and young people in the MENA region.
Last week, Julie Lee, MFO Senior Technical Adviser, was in Tunis with the CAWTAR team to jointly devise a financial education e-learning strategy for CAWTAR and to begin development of modules for their e-platform that will be rolled out next year. Part of the e-learning strategy will explore how to incorporate the ways in which social media can facilitate learning. In Tunisia alone, there are more than 3 million Facebook users for a penetration rate of more than 30%.
The e-learning curriculum is just one of many initiatives that MFO is working on that leverages technology to meet the demand for financial education and helps address the age-old challenges of scale, cost, and sustainability of delivering it to clients.
MFO and CAWTAR’s partnership underscores the importance of financial education and financial inclusion in the Arab region today.
