Samira has been saving regularly over the years for her daughter’s education. Her sister, Bopha, calls her one evening – she has a cancer and not enough money to pay for the medical bills. Could Samira help her? Siven has bought new shoes, the cheapest possible. His sister, Samira, congratulates him for being so savvy…
Today, Mr. S., farmer and father of three, is attending a financial literacy workshop. As the facilitator introduces himself, Mr. S’s mind wanders. He left his wife and eldest son to take care of the animals. It may rain this afternoon and he’d rather be in the field now. The first exercise is easy but…
On July 9th 2014, the OECD released the PISA financial literacy assessment of students. It is the first of its kind at that scale: around 29 000 students in 13 OECD countries were surveyed. It is a big step forward in recognising financial literacy as a proper set of skills and knowledge- independently from maths, even…
Literacy is being able to read and write; maths literacy is being able to count and master simple operations; but what is financial literacy? This phrase appeared in the late 1990s and it means knowing enough about finance to take the most appropriate decisions with money. How do we know if we are “financially literate”? Financially…
Friday was a very full half day of keynotes speakers. The first was about programme evaluations, and how important it is to think about how to evaluate when designing a training programme. The second speaker -Jonah Lehrer, a thought provoking writer – introduced what behavioural economics is about. Through many examples, he explained latest dicoveries by scientists studying…
I am attending the OCDE financial literacy conference in Toronto today and tomorrow. Great to meet other people (banks, governmental agencies, content providers, school teachers, consultant, a few NGOs) involved in financial education too: 400 delegates from 40 countries! First impressions: more and more people are interested in boosting financial education- that’s great. The Provincial…