Youth-Inclusive Financial Services at the SMDP Ghana
Jennifer Gurbin Harley
Sep 28, 2011
What Does the Future Look Like for the Youth and Financial Services Industry?
The SEEP Network's Youth and Financial Services (YaFS) working group invites you to share your vision for the future of the YaFS industry.
In May 2011, the SEEP Network, in partnership with The
MasterCard Foundation, officially launched the Youth and Financial Services
(YaFS) working group. The vision of the
working group is to contribute to the YaFS industry by bringing stakeholders
together to produce and disseminate documentation that further contributes to
the learning of industry practitioners. We hope to move beyond case studies to
develop trend analyses that provide a comprehensive and overarching view of
where the industry currently stands as well as where it is headed.
We are currently in the first phases of our two-year work plan and we’re working to reach out to industry stakeholders to ensure the relevance and quality of the group’s objectives and deliverables. We’re looking for input from stakeholders like you:
What is your vision for the future of the YaFS industry? What tools could the working group develop to help you work more effectively? Click here to have your say by filling out a short survey before October 7th.
We expect the working group objectives to complement work being done in the area of youth and financial services, but also provide additional knowledge in the form of learning tools and trend studies that practitioners can call upon when contemplating the design and implementation of youth financial service programming. The group’s focus will be on formal youth financial services but will necessarily include discussion of non-financial services and savings groups insofar as they are directly related to increasing access to, and effectiveness of, financial services offered to youth.
In June and September 2011 the working group held its first sets of meetings in Washington, DC with approximately 30 practitioners from organizations including Save the Children, Making Cents, Freedom from Hunger, MEDA, Plan International, StreetKids International, World Vision, ChildFinance, the Aga Khan Foundation, Alatoun, World Relief, WOCCU, FINCA International and CRS.
If you have any questions or comments on the working group or if you are interested in joining us in November 2011 at the SEEP annual conference, please contact Rossana Ramirez (rramirez@freedomfromhunger.org) or Jennifer Gurbin Harley (jharley@meda.org). If you’d like more information on the SEEP Network, please visit their website at www.seepnetwork.org.
