Background and Introduction

With an adolescent population of 6.4 million accounting for almost a fourth (24.19%) of the total population of 26.49 million, the adolescent population of Nepal has great potential to unlock quality life outcomes for the country in the years to come. UNICEF HQ identified Nepal as one of the Pilot countries to promote and implement CSFE besides Macedonia, Nepal, South Sudan and Turkey. The ultimate goal of these efforts is to enable children and adolescents to become socially and economically empowered to lead responsible lives and become agents of change. This pilot is expected to contribute to Ministry of Education's aims as stated in the National Plan of Action (NPA) on Holistic Adolescent Development in Nepal that is being led by the National Planning Commission. The NPA has a vision of an empowered and competent new generation for a better Nepal and includes "All adolescents are economically empowered to deal with financial matters responsibly" as one of the 5-year goals. Recognizing that the current education system has not been able to provide children/ adolescents with skills required for employment and that financial capability can broaden life opportunities for these groups; financial education combined with social education instills social responsibility and values that help combat social and financial challenges.

A curriculum for the CSFE program was developed based on the gap analysis program review organized at Park Village resort with the government and other stakehodlers in coordination with CDC and NFEC. This review also identified suitable contents for adaptation of curriculum. Most of the contents were adaptaed from the Social and Financial education package developed by Aflatoun. Since 2012, UNICEF Nepal has been implementing financial literacy for adolescents in out-of-school settings under its adolescent development and participation program and advocating for CSFE in schools. As part of this initiative, that work is being extended to include secondary school children and adolescents in formal and non-formal settings.

Therefore, the project consists of providing technical and logistical support to the Government of Nepal to execute the Action Plan developed for integration of CSFE in formal as well as non-formal education in Nepal.

 

Objectives of the CSFE program

• Adaption of the Child Social and Financial Skill (CSFE) curriculum for secondary education (grade 9&10) and Open School programs (OSPs)
• To capacitate the CSFE teachers, trainers, master trainers and educational support staff on CSFE curricula and child-centered teaching methods;
• To support the government to conduct the pilot CSFE program in schools, analyse and incorporate lessons learnt in the adapted CSFE modules for formal and non-formal education.
• To promote the development of M&E systems and tools on learning outcomes on specific competencies, in line with the LMTF learning domains

 CSFE Program Districts:

Sankhuwasabha ( Eastern Dev Region), Rautahat  (Central Development Region), Lamjung (Western Development Region), Surkhet (Mid-Western Development Region) and Doti   (Far-Western Development Region).

CSFE Program Results:

• 15 schools are carrying out savings program in schools with savings amount totalling NPR 239,582[1]. The average amount of per child saving Rs. 313.00
• Altogether 34.8% out of 2,194 total targeted children are actively participating in the savings program.
• The participation of students in CSFE had reached to over 94% and 82% at two of the five piloted districts which is very encouraging.
• The CSFE curriculum has been integrated in grades 9 textbooks of social studies.
• The baseline and end line study for integrating child social and financial education has shown improvement in most of the areas of children’s personal knowledge and exploration. The improvement from 85.1% to 90.0% in understanding child rights and 60.8% to 69.1% in consumer awareness between baseline and end line survey are couple of examples. On an average, number of students giving right answers have gone up from 49.5% to 54.2%[2] within a short span of five months.

 

[1]Sankhuwasabha (NPR25,475); Rautahat (NPR 28,760); Lamjung (NPR 111,877); Surkhet (NPR 21,450); Doti(NPR 52,020)

[2] Draft report: Baseline and End line study for Integrating Child and Social and Financial Education; April 2016