Dalphine and Melisa at the Aflatoun Kenya Stakeholders’ Meeting.
We were recently invited to the Aflatoun Stakeholders’ Meeting, as part of the organizations that provide learning content. The meeting was hosted by Aflatoun international, an organization that offers financial and social education to children. They give children financial literacy for competitive skills and enable them to have a more equitable future.
They target children from the age of 3 years. Aflatoun International has been able to reach 200+ organizations in 109 countries, with its secretariat in Amsterdam, where their curriculum is developed. In Malawi and Lesotho, the organization empowers orphans and the vulnerable groups (conflicted areas). In Uganda, the organization empowers girls to become economic citizens and in Kenya, with the help of child-fund, it supports deprived, excluded, vulnerable children and young people.
Aflatoun has its own child centered curricula focusing on these areas:
- Personal understanding and exploration,
- Rights and responsibilities,
- Saving and spending,
- Planning and budgeting and
- Entrepreneurship. This curricula is then contextualized to the region in question.
The organization has partnered with several other organizations in providing Financial education and have reached a total of 5.4 Million children across the countries mentioned. Some of the organizations in attendance that did presentations, were:
Cheshire Disability Services Kenya:
Works towards empowering the physically challenged children, by ensuring inclusivity in the society, where persons with disabilities are respected, empowered and have the possibility to develop to their full potential. It ensures that these people live normal and meaningful life by providing financial education to them. The children are allowed to conduct their own money generating programs like farming.
ChildFund (Kenya):
Child Fund Kenya is implementing Aflatoun in non-formal settlements in Nakuru District, Mukuru slums and Machakos. One of the projects it has been actively involved in is farming for sustainability purposes. Their representative was Wallace Amayo, Technical Advisor for Youth and Economic Strengthening.
The Private Education Development Network(Uganda):
A Ugandan organization whose aim is to empower young people (10-25 years) in Uganda through innovative and demand led entrepreneurial interventions that enable them to transform their livelihoods and communities. The organization offers Financial Education, business skills youth mentoring and entrepreneurial training in and out of schools.
Stepping Stones International (Botswana):
Seeks to unlock the potential of vulnerable youths of ages 12-25. They do this through holistic development, strengthening families and activating sustainable opportunities to become self-sufficient. The services they provide are: youth empowerment, family enrichment, strengthening youth services and advocacy.
All the organizations named above have partnered with Aflatoun in one way or another, towards achieving a common goal: Financial literacy/ education to children.
Key take home points for financial literacy
As the meeting came to a conclusion, there were several issues that came up and were agreed upon with all the Stakeholders;
- Creating a strong network for resource mobilization
- Each stakeholder should take part in the upcoming events to discuss how best to approach the issue (Providing Financial Education/Literacy)
- A matrix to be shared to each organization on the way forward
- KICD to partner with most of the organizations that have their own curricula for quality control measures
- Identify missing stakeholders and incorporate them in the network
- Trainings to help participants identify with the organization’s mission and vision.
About the authors:
Melissa Mukuya is our Content Assistant. She believes in empowering young minds through sharing ideas, thus creating opportunities that are limitless for them.
Dalphine Ogana is also our Content Assistant. She is an optimistic, thoughtful, well-seasoned teacher of English and Literature who aspires to help learners climb their own mountains as high as possible driven by the clichéd phrase ‘knowledge is power’ but hey, clichés are clichés because they are true!
You can access our Financial Literacy content on SMS by dialing *291# from any Safaricom line in Kenya. You can also register for the Basic Business course on Shupavu291 Web, for only 10 shillings a day.