Girls from the Binti Pamoja Center in Nairobi participate in a pilot test.

A remittance receiver's house in Cuenca, Ecuador.

Forthcoming Modules

In the next two years, as a part of its innovation phase, Global FEP will develop additional curricula on new topics relevant to diverse market segments. Emerging themes include insurance/risk management, remittances, youth, consumer protection, and electronic banking. The development of the youth, remittance, consumer protection and risk management and insurance modules are now underway. If you are interested in becoming a partner for the other new modules, please contact us at financialed@mfopps.org.

The Youth Module
The youth module is being developed through a partnership with the Binti Pamoja Center in Nairobi, Kenya, an affiliate of the local youth organization in a low income area of Nairobi, Carolina for Kibera. Market research interviews and discussions held in March, 2006 identified four key topics: budgeting, savings, banking services, and earning money.

Learning sessions on these topics were pilot-tested in July 2006 with 20 graduates from the Center. Following this pilot test and refinement of the learning sessions, a trainer’s guide was developed and used to train the same 20 young women in a training-of-trainers workshop.  Since January 2007, 120 girls have been trained through Binti Pamoja’s Safe Spaces project. 

To make the Kenyan module generic, the Global FEP held a cross-test meeting March 10-13, 2007 in La Paz Bolivia with partners from Pro Mujer (Bolivia), Save the Children (Nepal), Zakoura (Morocco), and BRAC (Bangladesh). The purpose of the workshop was to build capacity for these organizations to conduct market research to adapt the financial education curriculum to their local contexts and then rollout the training to their target population.

Members of the GFEP youth curriculum development team presented at the Youth Microenterprise Conference in Washington, DC in September. In addition to a PowerPoint Presentation, the presentation included an interactive component where the audience got to participate in a session from the youth curriculum.

The generic youth curriculum should be finalized in early 2008. [Top of page.]
  
The Remittance Module
In August 2006, Global FEP in partnership with Accion International, conducted market research with Banco Solidario in Ecuador. The market research identified the current financial behaviors of people who receive remittances and the impact of remittances on the household budget. 

The remittance team conducted in-depth interviews with Banco Solidario staff, remittance receivers, and informal remittance providers in Quito, Guayaquil, and Cuenca. They also conducted focus group discussions with six separate groups from the three cities. One financial behavior of remittance receivers is to manage the remittance through a four-stage process:

1. Immediate—Payment of debt for emigrant trip to bank or informal money lender. This trip usually costs at least $12,000 and takes at least 2 years to repay.

2. Short term—Household needs (food, education, clothing)

3. Medium term—Construction of house or home improvements for personal use

4. Long term—Additions to house such as additional floors to rent out and to facilitate retirement

The results of the market research were used to develop the remittance module, which was pilot tested in Ecuador in May 2007 with Dialogo de Gestiones. Five partners in the Philippines and Central America were then selected to cross test the module. In October and November 2007, GFEP held meetings in the Philippines and El Salvador to get feedback from the cross test partners. GFEP is now finalizing the module, which will be ready in early 2008. [Top of page.]

Consumer Protection Module
In preparation for the development of a new GFEP module on consumer protection, GFEP partnered with Finrural, a Bolivian association of MFIs, to conduct market research with 64 clients of eight regulated and unregulated MFIs in Bolivia. The team also conducted interviews with the Office of Bank Regulation (Superintendencia de Bancos), the staff of the eight MFIs, and members of the Debtors’ Association (Asociación de Deudores).

Overall, the team found that clients have little or no knowledge about their rights as users of financial services. The only right clients instinctively mentioned during FGDs was the right to receive good treatment from the MFI staff. Key consumer protection issues in Bolivia are transparency of interest rates and debt collection practices.

After conducting market research, the GFEP team led a concept development workshop to identify knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for designing the module. The goal of the module is to increase ethical practices between clients and MFIs. In order to ensure that MFIs will be interested in delivering this module to its clients, the module will balance both consumer rights and responsibilities. The pilot test of the module will be conducted in Bolivia in late April with regulated and unregulated MFIs. [Top of page.]