The Power of a Global Movement: scaling efforts to ensure children’s access to Social and Financial education

• In Event: Education Policy and Educational Reform

Proposal

The Power of a Global Network: scaling efforts to ensure children’s access to Social and Financial education
Kirsten Theuns – Aflatoun International

Socially and financially empowered children and youth have a higher chance to avoid school dropout, teenage pregnancy, and child labour, and they are more likely to be climate adaptive and engaged in community development. Financial literacy equips children with essential skills to make informed decisions about their future and supports their overall wellbeing. This increasingly drives stakeholders in the education sector to invest in school curricula and content that include elements of saving, budgeting, investing and teaches children and youth life, financial and entrepreneurial skills.

The objective of this presentation is to illustrate how a network can contribute to scaling efforts of integrating social and financial education (SFE) into education systems globally. Overall, the presentation will inform educators on the power of collective action, in the form of a network, in education. Two cases studies will provide actual examples of actions taken at different levels to build education systems that are more adapted and suitable to 21st century skills. Although not through protests, the SFE network does challenge and manages to change current conditions and aims to accomplish the same objective of improving education, improving the world.

The Aflatoun network is a group of stakeholders ranging from local to international CBOs, NGOs, UN bodies, government and finance institutions, working towards the common goal of empowering children and young people through SFE. The network forms a global movement since 1991 and is currently active in more than 100 countries at both implementation and policy-influencing levels. Over the years, the network has contributed to successful reform and educational systems change at local, national, regional and global levels. This presentation will look at two specific cases of uptake and integration of SFE in curricula and strategy documents. It demonstrates the power a movement can have in bringing about educational changes and provides insight into conditions that support a sustainable approach.

Financial Education for grades 7 to 12 in Jordan
The first case focuses on a country-level initiative, in which the network was involved and collaborated with local actors in Jordan. It describes the Financial Education Programme (FEP), which was kicked off in 2014 by the Jordanian Ministry of Education together with national institutions, local NGOs and many other national and international stakeholders. A financial literacy curriculum for all school students in grades 7 to 10 (compulsory) and 11 to 12 (optional) was developed and rolled-out, that until this day is still one of the few mandatory financially education programmes in the world. The presentation will highlight some of the reasons for this success, including the importance of local ownership, in this case by the government after multiple advocacy efforts from the network of partners. It also describes the process of scaling the programme from local to national level, which required a long time investment, and continuous testing and adjusting of the approach and tools by the network.

Financial Education as part of the Transforming Education Agenda
The second case zooms into the global effort of the movement to get SFE included in the Transforming Education Agenda. This case explains how a network can influence and use momentum to advance its goals. It narrates the advocacy efforts made to promote SFE's adoption, which included approaching Ministries of Education in numerous countries as well as presenting a letter to the Special Adviser of the UN Secretary General on the Transforming Education Summit (co-signed by 121 partner organizations from 70 countries). The discussion also shares successes, such as the invitation received by the network to hold a session during the Summit and present about the effectiveness of financial education. One of the positive outcomes of these advocacy efforts made by the network, was having Financial Skills mentioned, for the first time, in the concluding vision statement of the Secretary General of the United Nations, as one of the new set of skills needed by children and young persons to face challenges presented in today’s world.

Author

• Kirsten (Petronella Maria) Theuns, Aflatoun International