By Rani Deshpande, Save the Children

At YouthSave’s first stakeholder meeting in Bogotà in early 2011, much of the discussion was about plans: for product design informed by market research, marketing messages, data collection for our learning agenda, and knowledge dissemination based on this work.  Fast forward to the end of 2011 and our second stakeholder meeting in Nairobi, and the many new discussions demonstrated how much progress has been made in what seemed like relatively few and surprisingly fast months.

Image of Yauwanabhimana Youth Empowerment Program's corporate partners

By Payal Pathak, New America Foundation

On December 1^st, Sri Lanka’s Hatton National Bank launched Yauwanabhimana (meaning ‘Pride of Youth’), a uniquely designed economic empowerment programme for youth aged 18 – 30. Chandula Abeywikrema, the Deputy General Manager of HNB and YouthSave’s Expert Advisory Board member, gave life to the idea spearheading this ground breaking initiative, which aims to support youth to develop the soft and vocational skills, financial literacy, English skills, technical know-how, and market linkages (through its corporate partners) needed to thrive in Sri Lanka’s growing economy.

Image taken from here

By Payal Pathak, New America Foundation

Born and raised in the slums of Cape Town amid poverty, drug abuse, and gang violence, Marlon Parker was like millions of youth living in hardship today. But through hard work and cell phone technology, this once airport trolley boy became the co-founder of RLABs, a social enterprise based in South Africa that revitalizes communities through technology.

YouthSave financial education workshop in Nepal

By Jaya Burathoki, Save the Children

Originally posted on www.cgap.org

By Rani Deshpande, Save the Children

Despite growing interest in youth financial services as a means to financial inclusion, until recently there has been previous little publicly available information on what youth in developing countries want from financial institutions. YouthSave, a consortium of four practitioner and research organizations, sheds new light on this question using market research conducted in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya and Nepal.