Enfants du Mekong:
sponsoring and empowering students and their parents
Enfants du Mekong, a French charity created in 1958, sponsors around 22,000 children in South East Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, China and Burma) through 580 programmes. Apart from paying for children's educations, Enfants du Mekong also finances development projects such as school building, house repairs, bicycles purchase and reaches out to more than 60,000 children.
Enfants du Mekong co-organised and hosted several
financial education training since 2007: in Cambodia (Sisophon and Phnom Penh) for staff and for trainers and in the Philippines (Cebu) for university students.
Teachers and social workers who attended one or both Training the Trainers have started designing their own Financial Education programme to reach out to their clients. The first challenge is to find the time in a very busy schedule. The support and encouragement from Enfants du Mekong's senior staff and programme managers are a big push to make financial education really happen. Working in team helps a lot too, to generate ideas and train in a more fun way for participants and trainers. The first step is to find out who the potential participants will be, what issues with money they often have, and how to address them in a training. Choosing the training format (length, day...) is also very important in order to get enough attendance. The second task is to tap into the Trainer's guide, structure a training addressing participants' needs and prepare the props (cards with pictures, flip-charts, invitations...). Once ready, it's D Day for trainers: read below three examples of training for parents, university students and Grade 12 students in Sisophon.
Teaching parents in Phnom Penh
In July 2009, three social workers organised a first Financial Education training to sponsored children's parents: split over 6 different locations, 185 parents (of which 78% of mothers) came to a one-day training. The trainers selected three activities: on needs and wants, on shopping behaviour and on expense planning and saving. The training activities were the right level, interactive and colourful enough to engage parents to participate and discuss. Parents were very positive and would like financial education training every quarter and said they would like to change their behaviour with money. The next challenge is to continue offering financial education training and to measure its impact.
examples of adapted props to fit local realities: Cambodian "shopping" cards.
planning expenses and saving
Teaching university students in Phnom Penh:
Enfants du Mekong Phnom Penh School Center organised a first training in July 2009 with 21 first year students. The training objectives were to raise awareness on wise spending in order for students to better manage their sponsorship, and avoid debts. Four activities were chosen and adapted: a discussion around money (this is an unusual topic for a "class" for all the students), "Aunt Pheap's story" (maths exercise about overspending and debts), needs and wants, wise shopping behaviour and saving goals. Students worked on the activities in small groups and participated very well to all the activities. The main challenge was fitting a 4 hour training in students (and teachers)' busy schedule. Another challenge was identifying real needs from wants... not so obvious for teenagers.
First training for first year students: learning and practising life skills
Read students' testimonials a few months after their training:
- Thea's letter: financial saving
- Chel Chong's letter: the advantage of studying finance
- Heangly's letter: saving money
- Sokha's letter: deciding what to do with money
- Kunthea's letter: controlling expenses
- Thavanak's letter (page 1 and page 2): writing a budget
Teaching Grade 12 students in Sisophon:
Training is in progress... stay tune!