By Alejandra Montes and Dasha Kosmynina, Save the Children

At the second annual Child and Youth Finance International(CYFI) Summit awards ceremony last week in Istanbul, Colombia received an award for Global Money Week 2013, a week long set of activities in which “children and youth from across the world learn about saving, banking, giving back to the community and sparking their entrepreneurial spirit,” organized by the CYFI movement.  According to CYFI, 80 countries, 185 institutions, and 1 million children officially participated in over 1000 organized activities throughout Global Money Week, which ran from March 15 to 21, 2013.

Photo by Greg Westfall - Creative Commons License

By Alexis Saffran and Anjana Ravi, New America Foundation

Originally posted on nextbillion.net

With a third of the global population today under the age of 19 and 90 percent of these young people living in developing countries – 45 percent living on less than $2 a day—there is an urgent need to create easy and efficient savings mechanisms for the young.

By Monica Sharma, New America Foundation

Originally posted on CGAP

In a recent New York Times article, Nick Kristof told the story of Alfred Nasoni, a farmer who pulled his eldest son out of school and cultivated only part of his plot due to financial constraints. Yet, Alfred also happened to spend a considerable amount of the family’s budget on alcohol, cigarettes, and women.

Nasoni’s story isn’t surprising: The toll of deep financial strain often promotes destructive decisions and low productivity among impoverished populations. The plight of the poor results in what the article refers to as a “[…] vicious circle: despair leads people to self-medicate in ways that compound the despair.”

Image from proudlyafrican.com. Accessed at: http://bit.ly/Ok03x2

By Rodrigo Sermeno, New America Foundation

The increasing development of Kenya’s banking sector has allowed many people to have access to savings, especially those without prior access to financial services. This change has come primarily from new technologies, such as mobile phones and ATM machines, that have facilitated access to these services. In this rapidly changing environment, YouthSave’s partner, Kenya Post Office Savings Bank (Postbank), has had to work arduously to remain relevant to customers in a financial sector fundamentally different than the one a few years ago.