• Financial Services
• About the issue
• Key Projects
  • Consumers for fair financial services
  • Financial education
    • Background
    • results
  • Consumer protection in the Caribbean
  • global money transfers
  • Activity map

Background

Consumers International, together with Consumer Information Network (CIN), Youth Education Network (YEN) in Kenya and Tanzania Consumers Advocacy Society (TCAS), embarked on this project to promote financial capability in East Africa. The initiative is funded by DFID through the Financial Education Fund.

The project's overall objective is to create an enabling environment to empower consumers to make informed decisions about their money and the financial products they buy. Specific objectives are to:

• strengthen the capacity of consumer orgnanisations in the provision of financial education services and tracking of consumer behaviour change through Consumer Advice Centres (CACs)
• increase the quality and outreach of their financial education activities.

CI brought Microfinance Opportunities to the project as the financial education expert resource. Microfinance Opportunities led the essential research to develop a greater understanding of the financial knowledge, skills and attitudes of the target group.

The results and recommendations from this needs-assessment exercise informed Financial education counselling: counsellor's handbook, which was first piloted in workshops in Kenya and Tanzania in 2011.

The pilot project has provided local consumer groups with the skills to develop their own financial education programmes; it has given volunteers within the communities the knowledge to continue providing informal couselling long after the initial training; and it has empowered poor people, particularly women, to manage their money better in the long term.