Personal Finance workshop for international students studying in the US

Yesterday, we ran a pilot workshop at Humphrey College (U of M). Target group: international students who come and study in the US for one or several years. Challenges are many: from understanding a new and different financial system with its specific vocabulary and challenges (especially credit cards offers), to living on a tight budget, or managing daily life expenses and tuition- for some of them, this is the first time they leave their parents and manage their expenses. Besides, many of them are worried about how they will pay back their students' loan (stress shared by their American co-students).

identifying the main issues

managing and planning a limited resource: time

 a similar skill as managing money

 analysing various cases and expense types

 tips to control spending by expense type

budgeting is fun!

Enfants du Mekong - students' review

As financial literacy is mostly about behaviour and habits, not just techniques, one training workshop is not enough. Last weekend, Enfants du Mekong Year 2 students attended their 4th workshop and reviewed how to track expenses,  control expenses and plan ahead.

playing a skit on saving and managing expenses



remembering what they learned in October

sharing tips on managing money

Learning online

For all of you who don't have much time to learn about money matters, a 3 minute cartoon and a quiz you can do in 10 to 15 minutes... and life long tips to make your life better thanks to money... and not make it worse because of money.

http://www.aandbmake3.com/moodle/course/view.php?id=26

You can login as guest to watch the video. The quiz requires a login - send us an email to create a free login.

It is the first one - we'll open more tips one by one. If you want to browse the other tips (no cartoon or quiz yet), have a look here.

Financial Education Conference - Manila

Chhunn attended the Financial Education conference organised by Citi and the Financial Times in Manila.

with the Enrich team (from left to right: Lenlen, Aruni, Myriam, Chhunn and Raul) - photo: Raul Puentespina)

Family programme - Phnom Penh - Enfants du Mekong

Last September, Enfants du Mekong social workers in Phnom Penh ran a review workshop with low income families (parents and their sponsored children) - 149 people in 5 groups. The review focused on expense management and debt reduction with a first part on motivation and goals.

 

 

Financial education workshop in Calcutta

Phuong, Entrepreneurs du Monde's socio – economic services manager for Asia who attended our level 1 and level 2 training the trainers last June, organised a training the trainers with NCRC, Entrepreneur du Monde's Indian partner in Calcutta (India), mostly using a+b=3's material and techniques. The games and interactive methods were very well received. Participants found some topics especially relevant: communication with the mother-in-law for instance. Some participants started noting down their expenses within two weeks of the training. NCRC is planning to use these training ideas and techniques to raise the financial literacy of the villagers whom they work with. Following the training, NCRC staff have already re-worked on some of their training to make them more interactive (budget for instance).

Budget game



Challenges in Financial Education

a+b=3's financial ladder... in Bengali

Financial literacy steps

Communication with mother-in-law

Preparing a budget...lots of discussion!

savings

shopping game

classifying expenses

Facilitation skills

Entrepreneurs du Monde organised a second training session with Chamroen (Cambodian Microfinance Institution)'s training officers; this time, the focus was not on the content but on facilitation skills: how to facilitate a financial education training.

Bugeting Facilitation

 

Marketing Facilitation

Spending facilitation

 

Spending Training Tools

Spending Habits

 

Spending talks

Budgeting Training material