Aflatoun

The challenge
Around the world millions of children are growing up in poverty. They experience chronic stress due to that poverty, which has an adverse effect on their memory and thus also their performance at school. This increases the chance of a lower position in society.

The changers
Aflatoun is a network of 72 organisations worldwide that strive to provide quality social and financial education to children. It has an educational programme that uses art, theatre and games to teach children about matters such as saving, budgeting, children’s rights and the benefits of cooperation. Almost one million children in 61 countries attended lessons through the programme in 2010. The Aflatoun secretariat, supported by ICS, collects the evaluations from those lessons and uses this information to increase the effectiveness of the programme even further.

The change
ICS is implementing the Aflatoun programme in Thailand, Tanzania and Kenya. In Busia, West Kenya, 503 children are participating through 25 schools.

A few results of Aflatoun:

•    Already more than 1.1 million children have participated at 8391 educational institutions in the Aflatoun programmes.
•    44 percent of those children (486,453) are saving actively. Together they have already saved more than € 1.4 million.
•    5111 small businesses have been established through ‘Aflateen’ (a teenage variant of the Aflatoun programme).
•    3218 social projects have been set up under 'Aflateen'.
•    In Busia, 503 children are working with the Aflatoun programme at 25 schools.  
•    The children saved € 208.00 over a period of three months (measuring period: July-September 2011).