Let me share an embarrassing episode. My undergraduate teenage daughter got a holiday job with a film company. She was paid $352 by cheque after a month’s engagement. A month later when she was back to school, I bumped onto the cheque on her desk. I asked her why she hadn’t banked the cheque, yet she had a bank account under her mum. She told me she hadn’t banked it because she didn’t have a need for the money. I asked her if she was aware that it took four days for the cheque to clear at the bank and become cash to be used. She said she didn’t know that. Yes, the daughter of a financial literacy teacher. It dawned on me that, while I was ever busy teaching other people financial literacy, I had never once taken time to teach my daughter or even her mother. I may have assumed they would learn through osmosis or financial literacy was in my daughter’s genes. Shame on me. I started teaching her from then on.

Why this report is compelling is because from experience, I have been a business judge and business plan competition judge for a Technoserve Kenya implemented Girl Effect Program that teaches financial and business literacy to teenage girls. For three years I have participated in the program, I have seen girls grow from naive teenagers to mature business ladies within short periods. Sample this: a group of five girls are given $6 each which they pool to $30 and are trained on business and made to do businesses of their choice as a group. After three months, we, judges, would visit their businesses and evaluate them against their business plans. The group that has earned and saved the highest amount is given a cash reward of $235 as capital to boost business. You won’t believe it but most of the over 700 girls( within the three years period) would have saved at least over $150 after doing business for just three months. We, judges, were touched by the teenage girls’ enthusiasm, diligence and commitment to implementing what they had learned. In one of the lunch session after judging, I joked with my fellow 10 judges that our lunch alone was enough to give capital to 16 girls. We felt ashamed to consume $10 capital for two girls each.

I support the idea of mothers being the best practical teachers of financial literacy to the girls. They are not only more available for them than fathers but they are the home finance managers. Fathers may be good teachers but they are more prone to take risks which sometimes border on financial illiteracy. The risk taking element can be left out from the girls until they are big enough to take care of their finances.

Thank you Jeff for this important post. Girl Effect information can be found at http://www.girleffect.org/starts/feature-technoserve.