Financial Education Information

When most of us think of family financial education, we think of planning for retirement or learning how to set up a college fund. But for people who live on $1 per day or less, the ability to manage money well is critical for survival. For these families, a bad money decision is not just a setback—it can mean that a child must be pulled out of school, there is less food during the hungry season, and there is no money to pay for medicine for a sick baby.

From Cash Flow Management to Financial Negotiations: Making the Most of Limited Resources

The skills we learn and use here in America to make the most of our resources are the same skills families who live in absolute poverty can learn and use:

  • Cash Flow Management and Budgeting: Learning the art of managing money proactively.
  • Savings: How to save regularly and in a safe location.
  • Debt Management: Controlling debt and avoiding over-indebtedness.
  • Financial Negotiations: How to strengthen a bargaining position and get a better deal from suppliers, banks and even neighbors and friends.
  • Going to the Bank: How banks work and impose charges. How poor entrepreneurs can use bank services.

Freedom from Hunger, in collaboration with Microfinance Opportunities, and with funding from Citigroup, is creating a package of learning sessions that will be widely distributed—not just in our own Credit with Education programs but to self-help groups throughout the world.

To ensure that this education is retained, applied and locally relevant, Freedom from Hunger has applied its well-documented and proven approach to creating effective learning sessions for self-help groups. It is not necessary that participants be literate or even numerate (able to recognize or write numbers) to participate. The learning process uses a structure common to all Freedom from Hunger’s lifeskills topics:

  1. Identify a problem and illustrate through story, role-play or song
  2. Share personal experiences about the problem
  3. Discuss in small groups ideas for solving the problem
  4. Share ideas with the entire group and provide feedback
  5. Listen to suggestions from the field agent on additional ideas for solving the problem
  6. Try new ideas and promise to encourage one another
  7. Return on another date for review. Report successes, failures, give encouragement for trying more ideas.

Freedom from Hunger’s programs give mothers a chance to earn money in home-based businesses. Learning sessions on vital topics such as health, nutrition and business management make the most of their earnings. Financial education rounds out their lifeskills and equips families with more resources to make the most of their money and travel further on the path to self-reliance.

Citigroup

Mircofinance Opportunities