How to Support Financial Rights and Financial Education for Children and Youth

Now more than ever we have a global responsibility to advance the understanding of financial rights and responsibilities among our young people. Building on our work in education and youth development, IREX was recently invited to join Child & Youth Finance International (CYFI), an exciting movement that is working to bring financial access and education to children and youth around the world. Working together we can not only put a spotlight on this issue, we can make real change for our children and youth and their communities.

Here are a few things you can do right now to support the movement:

1)    Follow CYFI on Facebook and Twitter. They are a one-stop shop for what is going on in this field.

2)    Think about whether the banks and other financial institutions you use have child and youth friendly banking products (ex. interesting bearing no penalty accounts) and if they don’t, talk to them about it.

3)    Look for ways financial literacy can be incorporated into your educational and youth development programs. Do your teens understand the basics of borrowing, how insurance works, and the benefits of saving? CYFI has a draft  set of competencies  that can help inform schools and youth programs.

4)    Think about attending and/or sponsoring a group to attend the CYFI Summit  in April 2012 where Children, Youth, Business, Policy Makers and Practitioners are coming together to share their commitments and innovations in the Child Finance Movement.

Looking ahead: IREX is part of the CYFI Education Experts panel, the consulting panel that is providing input into Child Finance Education products, including global curriculum standards. I am pleased to learn that the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is working on a draft framework and assessment for financial literacy for 2012 which will allow nations to see how they are fairing in this area.

CYFI’ s goal is to provide financial access and education to 100 million children and youth in 100 countries by 2015. Let’s all do we what we can to support this ambitious and very necessary movement!