Jamie Zimmerman, New America Foundation

Over the last year, the YouthSave Consortium has talked a lot about the value of learning from youth, hearing their voices and understanding their wants and needs in order to build smart, effective products. We have also written extensively about the power of incentives, nudges, and hope in helping youth build the habits and skills that will lead them to successful savings and asset accumulation over time.

8^th grade children participating in a financial capability workshop in Medellin.

Photo credit: Angela Mesa, Save the Children

By Rani Deshpande & Alejandra Montes Saenz, Save the Children

The extent to which financial education can actually motivate savings is a critical question for many parts of the financial inclusion field – from those working with youth to consumer protection advocates to policy makers.  For YouthSave, it’s paramount because we are implementing some form of financial education, ranging from face-to-face workshops to themed radio dramas, in all of our project countries.  So it was with much interest that we listened to the insights of former Women’s World Banking consultant Ricardo Leon at the recent Colombia YouthSave multi-stakeholder meeting. We felt strongly that his lessons on optimizing financial education for account uptake that were based on his experience working with the MFI ADOPEM in the Dominican Republic were applicable to our context and efforts.

By Jennifer Denomy, MEDA

(orginally posted on the SEEP Network)

Kathmandu, located high in the Himalayas in a bowl-shaped valley in central Nepal, recently provided a dramatic setting for the first of four training sessions on youth financial services provided as part of SEEP’s Reaching Scale in Youth Financial Services Practitioner Learning Program (PLP), which started 2.5 years ago.

By Jamie Zimmerman, New America Foundation

(Orginally posted on Microfinace Gateway)

The annual Making Cents Youth Economic Opportunities Conference convened last week on the heels of recent predictions that by 2017 youth unemployment is expected to rise to 12.9% globally and more than 25% in poorer regions. With youth populations and their access to economic opportunities moving in increasingly divergent directions, we face a pressing question: what do youth need to envision, believe in, and put themselves on the path toward the best possible economic future?