Do you speak the new age financial lingo? Can you call yourself financially literate? Yes? No? Confused?? Let’s start with understanding what Financial Literacy means.
Going by definition, it can be called the knowledge and skills needed for an individual to make informed decisions about his/her financial resources. While this sounds quite logical and intuitional, not many know how to manage their finances effectively and create a pool of savings for the rainy day. This makes it even more valuable for the public, especially those residing in the rural areas to have access to it.
But since the world has shifted to a digital space, so has the financial canvas. Thus, bringing a twist of its own, it is digital financial literacy that matters the most now. And GFI (Grameen Foundation India) knows just how to get it across! Through its numerous projects, GFI strives to spread digital financial literacy among those who have lesser exposure to all things urban; with a special focus on women. GFI strongly believes that in order to successfully implement this ambitious vision across the country, one, you better have the skills and resources and hence provide the same. If not, you look for meaningful collaborations and partnerships in order to get things done. Naturally, we swear by strategizing and realigning our methodologies till the best (read most effective) implementation plan is worked out. It’s not simply a game of numbers. The idea is not to reach out to the masses and spread awareness regarding what financial literacy is and how beneficial it would be to use it digitally. Rather, we reach out to people in a manner so as to educate them about it, make them comfortable with not only the concept but its working too. It is essential that the rural people are made at ease with the technology and are taught through experiential learning, the pros and cons of the same. To make this transition smooth, we strive to become one of them. Not by conducting complex classes, not by preaching theory as a means of education but, by simply extending our hand of friendship.
Through our various projects we have come to find that financial literacy is best taught and incorporated in early years of one’s life. The youth is found to be fearless in adopting new tricks of trade and is generally adept with technology. This makes them fast learners and an even faster means of spreading the same. It has also been established that the woman of the house is generally risk averse when it comes to money matters and thus, tends to handle the household finances very well. Owing to this, they make for the ideal students to adopt the habit of savings and subsequent money management. We have now come to see multiple examples of such women who have successfully changed the financial state of their respective families and elevated themselves out of poverty. Well we aren’t saying we have found a magic wand to eradicate poverty, rather established a mechanism that helps us show them the opportunities that lie in front of them and the teach them of ways of leveraging the same. We now see that true empowerment comes from knowledge and that is precisely what we try to facilitate.
This is most certainly easier said than done. To overcome apprehensions and other obstacles while implementing the same on the field, GFI uses some parameters to keep checks on the efficiency. While executing thoroughly checked out plans in a project rarely is it seen that a pilot project has gone south. Trouble seeps in when the same game is played with bigger numbers. This implies more resources being used, more number of people being involved (from the organisation’s end), the error margin increasing and soaring costs. Soon things ho haywire and it becomes increasingly difficult to stay aligned to your initial goals. But if the right criteria are pegged down, the efficiency of the organisation and the effectiveness of the programs being administered increase manifold.
So here’s some of the ways to ensure you scale up your projects effectively:
- Get your baseline right
Conduct a baseline study to ascertain present usage of financial services in the project area. This helps massively in mapping/forecasting the project tools and methodologies to be designed in order to make the implementation effective going ahead. Baseline can thus, be called as a skeletal structure.
- Human centered design approach
No matter how automated the technology gets, there is an innate need for the human touch. This is achieved at GFI by designing solutions to obstacles keeping the human perspective in mind at each step of problem solving. This works brilliantly as the method gives a sense of peer learning in the mind of the end consumer.
- Adoption and usage
Look at results using parameters that measure the rate of adoption and usage long after the people were introduced to the tools and concepts of financial literacy. The effectiveness of any project is best judged basis the impact (preferably permanent and for good) left by the methods mentioned above during the project’s execution period in that region.
By Rasika Bhalerao:
Rasika Bhalerao is a Marketing & Branding enthusiast and likes travel. She works with the Marketing as well as the Business Development departments at Grameen Foundation India.