"Promoting financial education and a positive financial culture in children and youth is essential to ensuring a financially literate population capable of making informed decisions."

Featuring several concrete case studies from experiences around the world, this resource introduces the child social and financial education (CSFE) concept and provides guidelines for implementing CSFE in child-friendly schools. The module presents a relevant curriculum that facilitates the learning of social responsibility and financial competency. It offers a design through which children in child-friendly schools can explore their rights and responsibilities in classes or club sessions, take part in saving activities, and apply entrepreneurial skills to address social issues that are important to them. The CSFE module allows for flexibility for adaptation to a country's needs. The CSFE in Schools module is a result of a global partnership between the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Aflatoun, and Child Savings International that was established to advocate for CSFE through UNICEF education programmes. Core segments of the resource include:

1. Rationale for CSFE - CSFE aims to inspire children to be socially and economically empowered citizens by equipping them with the skills and knowledge to become active agents capable of transforming their communities and societies. CSFE provides children with a holistic learning experience that embraces knowledge and skills harnessed from both inside and outside the classroom.

   Selected lessons and findings from this section of the resource include (footnote numbers removed throughout by the editor): "Linking youth with financial services should include both financial and complementary 'non-financial services', such as mentoring, financial literacy and life skills training....A project in Kenya found that the introduction of child savings accounts improved the well-being of children and youth living in poverty. This preliminary research study on out-of-school adolescent Kenyan girls who participated in financial education determined that girls in the experimental group more than doubled their initial savings after being trained in important life skills including saving, business support and mentoring skills."

   It is noted that there is a psychological component of financial education and competence that is "deeply rooted in behavioural and psychological values. Hence, the importance of 'nudges', which are events or actions that modify people's behaviours and prompt specific actions that transform good intentions into corresponding behaviour changes. Young people often have psychological aversions to formal savings. These 'nudges' therefore allow them to overcome their aversion and develop the financial capability that will serve them into adulthood."

   "Financial education must go beyond building an understanding of how to acquire and manage resources. It must also instil in children an awareness of the possible repercussions of their financial decisions. Children can greatly benefit from examining social issues alongside financial education as they become aware of the disparities between the rich and poor, scarcity of resources, the role of marketing and consumerism in modern society, and the human and environmental damage of corporate irresponsibility and corrupt governments."

   "In line with child-friendly school principles, the integrative and child-centred approach to CSFE is designed to help children develop an investigative spirit, a proactive attitude and practical skills and values that build self-respect and respect for others."

2. The Core Components -
   • As defined by UNICEF, life skills education is particularly relevant in building skills, such as interpersonal communication, advocacy, decision-making, negotiation, cooperation, stress management, and critical thinking.
   • Financial education (money management and savings), which, amongst other things, is designed to develop children's and youth's confidence to question and seek financial information when required, through a framework in levels by age group (0-5, 6-9, 10-14, 15+).
   • Livelihoods education (enterprise and entrepreneurship), which is usually done through formalised educational teachings that promote entrepreneurship awareness, support business creation, or stimulate small business development. "[T]hese same skills can be used by young people to start social enterprises that directly tackle important social issues within their community, such as gender-based violence, environmental degradation and alcohol and drug abuse."

   The Child and Youth Finance Education framework, which is summarised on page 10 of the manual and outlined in full in Annex A, provides a detailed description of the essential attitudes, skills, and behaviours at different levels of a child's development.

3. Overview of CSFE Activities - The CSFE experiences presented throughout this module are based on examples from Aflatoun publications. There are many stories that illustrate different communication strategies and tools, such as forming clubs around issues relating to children's rights and responsibilities, which "provides children with the experience of participation, advocacy, planning and executing a plan." Just one example of an experience: Meljol is a child rights organisation based in Mumbai, India. In the absence of formal financial institutions in rural areas, Meljol developed a system of basic ledgers for both children and classes. Democratically elected children's clubs became the vehicle for co-managing the savings system. The fact that children contributed to the management of the savings reportedly led to greater accountability and child ownership of the programme.
4. Implementation Model of Social and Financial Education - "Integrating CSFE within the child-friendly schools framework should be strategically considered, with the aim of creating a cost-effective model that can be implemented on a large scale to achieve systemic change in the education sector. Given the great diversity within a country as well as between countries, a more fluid and flexible approach that caters to local realities and innovations is preferred."
5. Curriculum - "By allowing children some control over their learning, and creating spaces in which they can express themselves, CSFE empowers children to become active participants in their own learning....So as not to duplicate lessons and overburden classes, it is essential to study how CSFE learning materials complement existing national curricula, and how these materials can be adapted and incorporated into local curricula. Current issues that are relevant in the local context and impact children's lives also need to be incorporated." In terms of how to decide on the end product, one approach is a paper-based curriculum for children built on their developmental needs (children's workbook) or a curriculum for teachers (teachers' manual). "Experiments with other media, such as interactive CDs, videos and radio, have been successful in presenting the participatory lessons to children."
6. Monitoring and Evaluation of CSFE in Child-Friendly Schools - The experiential and participatory methodology used in CSFE builds intangible results such as confidence, feelings of empowerment, and respect for self and others. Qualitative evaluation tools are required to measure these goals; research methods and tools that have been used by various organisations implementing CSFE are described in the resource, such as:
   • Well-defined surveys that have been thoroughly tested for clarity, simplicity, and relevance (e.g., baseline surveys and surveys to measure specific indicators can help to define trends and gaps).
   • Focus groups as a participatory approach in research. Other participatory methods, such as the use of games and interactive activities, can elicit similar information.
   • Stories as tools for collecting personal evidence, which: allow sharing broadly what happens in schools; can be crucial advocacy tools; and play an important role in qualitative research. They can also provide supplementary information and serve to identify key indicators of success, if large numbers of stories are collected. These can include stories of change in the child's life or stories of change in the lives of groups of children in the school or community.
   • Drawings, photos, audio, and videos as tools to understand children's experiences and perceptions.
7. Conclusion - "Ultimately, CSFE allows children and youth to become more socially and economically empowered citizens."