MSU-IIT NMPC Trains Teachers from Partner Schools the Aflatoun Program to Spread the Value of Savings and Social Empowerment to Future Generations

 

Aflatoun Program at Present

In a joint effort by the Marketing Department and the NATCCO Aflatoun Program, a training was conducted last May 28-29, 2014 to different participating teachers from different schools whose aim is to orient and enhance their capabilities as Aflatoun implementers. The training was facilitated by Lasalette M. Gumban, NATCCO’s Youth Program Coordinator and Prof. Rodolfo M. Villanueva, Unit Head of NATCCO-Visayas ETC Branch and was held at MSU-IIT NMPC Head Office – Function Room. MDOs with present partner schools also attend the said training.

Because of the coop’s drives and motivations to really make a change to the community and most especially to the children through the Aflatoun Program, the training’s main effort is to have the program integrated to the schools through the teachers as the ones to teach the core elements of Aflatoun – its financial activity and its social teachings. It highlights the current trends of our modern times that kids who lack financial freedom during their early years often end up with lack of financial control in their later years. It also spoke of the greater opportunity that kids will enjoy – not only where they have the capacity to save but also to discover more about themselves, their strengths and weaknesses and how they will use such potentials to become catalysts of change in both their personal lives and the social arena.

From its humble beginnings during the 90’s in India as a non-profit organization to battle poverty through social empowerment and financial literacy, Aflatoun have come a long way to become a global movement. The movement has reached more than 1 million children in 90 countries. In the Philippines, there are 159,994 Aflatoun members around 454 schools with 3,360 teachers. The total Aflatoun savings in the Philippines is  P61,898,884.33. MSU-IIT NMPC, among other coops who are actively joining this movement, continued on to increase this numbers in the years to come.

 

Revisiting the Core Elements of Aflatoun

The two-day training was filled with a lot of momentous activities and practicum performed by the teachers and the MDOs relating to the deeper understanding of Aflatoun’s core elements. The Aflatoun Program lives by the five guiding elements: (1) Personal Understanding and Exploration, (2) Rights and Responsibilities, (3) Saving and Spending, (4) Planning and Budgeting and (5) Social and Financial Enterprise. These elements are well-integrated into any subject area of the school’s curriculum. From the first day up to the last day of the training, teachers and MDOs were exposed to activities and presentations that explore the deeper areas of each element, how it came to be and how it can be taught to young minds. 

Each topic relates to the development of the child’s personal and social skills and ultimately comes to the fusion of both his/her traits to entrepreneurship. During day-one, the teachers learned that it is essential for the child to discover himself/herself as a person and as a human being. In addition to this, the topic also progressed with letting the child know his/her strengths as these are very helpful for the child to decide as to what direction he/she may take in the future. Furthermore, the teachers and the MDOs were soaked into a discussion that is mainly about the given rights of the child. Noticeably, this topic focused more about the grounds for given rights of the child under the universally-accepted UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and aims to teach children their state-given rights. As the presentation said it, the secret word in this topic is about “empowerment.”

 In the progress of the training, the teachers dealt activities that emphasize savings over spending under a simplistic formula of approach that spending should be at the last end of both income and savings. Hence, the practical formula of Income – Savings = Expense. Corollary to this concept, the teachers have had a lot of fun playing with budgeting games just to emphasize what necessary things should children consider worth spending. This sort of games also shows what’s not worth the spending habits of kids. Indeed a great kind of fun it is and what’s even more fun is that Aflatoun envisioned kids to become social entrepreneurs in the future. That’s the last and most promising element of the program, inculcating in the mind of the kids the element of Social and Financial Enterprise. By being social entrepreneurs, kids are not driven to profit alone but are driven to make enterprises that has a “social impact”. In that sense, kids will have the outlook that by being financially free, they can be the start of change the society needs.

 

Expectations of the Training

Sharing the Aflatoun Program to teachers became a good start of fully implementing its gist to children that the coop is capable of reaching unto. The coop is one of the pioneering cooperatives to adapt the Aflatoun Program in 2008. In the strictest sense, the coop is successful in launching and fulfilling the financial area of the program. On the other hand, because the program not only looked at the children’s financial activity but rather it also takes into account their social development, the coop will need the aid of the educational sector to fulfill this endeavor. That’s why this training came as a blessing because it embarks the coop on a journey to fully realize Aflatoun’s potential.

The coop through the Marketing Department will be very busy to launch the program to participating schools of the training. This year will be the pilot year for the full implementation of Aflatoun and a series of activities are ahead of plan to make this year very special for our young savers.

Want to know more about Aflatoun? Learn it here and click on The Aflatoun Program.