Mitrataa’s Financial Literacy Program Maths is fun and useful – not scary!

1. In a nutshell – We will demystify maths

Financial literacy is one of the greatest challenges facing Nepalis. At its core is a strong fear of numbers learned and taught over generations in school. We want to demystify maths and numbers and make them accessible to the kids and women we work with, to empower them to make great, informed and confident financial decisions in their future.

Our strategy has 4 main elements to ensure we capture them young and instil a love of numbers and then reinforce it throughout their education and adulthood.

2. The need – Where does the fear of numbers originate?

The vast majority of schools in Nepal teach using rote learning – memorisation and repeating. This creates a number of challenges – lack of comprehension and application, fear of learning etc. But for maths, it is even more of a concern because it is not possible to rote learn maths. You have to understand how to apply it to solve the problems given. As a result, many children in Nepal develop a very early fear of maths and all things numbers related. At school, this means they struggle with maths and many of them fail constantly, compounding their fear and belief that they “can’t do maths”. When they leave school, they are left with a complete fear of numbers which creates challenges in their lives – their financial literacy remains very low – their ability to manage their household budgets, run businesses, save and invest money and generally use maths in daily life is almost zero.

We are going to change this. We are working at different levels – firstly we are working with schools to try to replace the rote learning model with a more learner focused approach. But this will take time and we don’t want to lose another generation of maths learners. In the meantime, we are working on a series of workshops, resources and other programs to operate alongside the maths classroom.

3. The Programs

All of these programs are aimed at providing the children with a toolbox of skills and a healthy understanding of numbers and maths to develop a sound level of financial literacy for their futures.

a) Kindergarten

Mitrataa - Financial Literacy Strategy Page 1 November 2017 We want to start with kids as soon as they enter the school system so that we minimise the opportunities to develop the fear of maths which is so endemic in Nepali schools.

We will develop 2 key tools for this:

i) At least 1 story book for children aimed at celebrating numbers. We are currently researching any existing books around and have an Australian author who is willing to write one if we cannot find anything appropriate. This will present maths and numbers in a fun and exciting light for them; and ii) Lots of numbers games catering to all different learning styles so that we have a resource kit for teachers to use in the classrooms to teach numbers in a fun and exciting way that appeals to all kids.

We will initially trial and implement these through our existing network of schools (currently around 15 schools) and then expand as they are finalised and tested.

b) Classes 1 to 6

This is the biggest risk age group when they really learn to fear maths and that you cannot just rote learn it. We will take a two-pronged approach:

i) Maths in School – We’ll develop a package of resources to support classroom teachers to teach the curriculum in a creative and fun filled way that caters to all different learning styles; and ii) Maths in Life – We’ll have a package of modules that schools can adapt and use in their extra-curricular activities time or that “lost time” after exams before the end of term etc. These will be aimed at maths in practice – how maths helps us in life, such as a shopping module, a savings module, etc.

We will again trial these with our existing network of schools but we’ll also run these workshops ourselves in schools to role model the behaviour and creative approach for maths teachers. We’ll run a number of workshops for maths teachers too so they can experience firsthand different ways of learning maths.

c) Classes 7 to 10

In class 8 and class 10, the children have an external exam so it is important that we help them to prepare for those. For this group, our focus will be on the school curriculum and supporting them to learn in different contexts so they develop a genuine understanding of maths and numbers, not just a fear and an attempt to rote learn.

We will also develop some more senior “Maths in Life” modules to prepare them with these crucial life skills too.

d) Women

We’ll continue with our work on financial literacy with women through our Daisy Chains and other programs. We’ll launch our Financial Literacy Manual which targets 4 main areas:

i) Budgeting ii) Earning

Mitrataa - Financial Literacy Strategy Page 2 November 2017 iii) Saving iv) Investing

Over time as the next generation goes through the school programs, we expect to see higher financial literacy rates amongst the women and less need for the women’s level programs.

Mitrataa’s vision is to do ourselves out of a job in Nepal. This means our focus has to be on sustainability. We operate all our projects in conjunction with a local partner and adopt a “train the trainer” model to all elements of our work. Whether training our local partner’s staff, the teachers or training women in the network to pass on their skills, we are constantly looking for ways to ensure our work is sustainable and able to continue without our support in future through a “pay it forward” model. We’ll be leveraging our strong network of schools through which we already conduct several teacher training programs to deliver this maths focused program.

Bec Ordish 1 November 2017

Mitrataa - Financial Literacy Strategy Page 3 November 2017