Image credt: Bank of Kathmandu

By Nicole Tosh, New America Foundation

On August 23^rd, the YouthSave Consortium convened a Multi-Stakeholder Meeting, entitled “Youth & Their Money: Insights into the Financial Lives of Youth” in Kathmandu, Nepal. In addition to the intriguing discussion with the expert panelists—including YouthSave Director Rani Deshpande and YouthSave Project Coordinator in Nepal Jaya Budathoki—two youth from Bhaktapur discussed their experience with Bank of Kathmandu’s (BoK) Chetansil Yuwa Bachat Yojana (CYBY) youth savings account and the benefits of saving in their own lives.

A breakout session at YouthSave’s Learning & Exchange Conference in Kathmandu. Image taken by Angela Mesa, Save the Children

By Rani Deshpande, Save the Children

In August, the YouthSave Consortium and partners came together in Kathmandu, Nepal, for our third Learning & Exchange Conference, to update each other on progress and brainstorm ways to overcome common challenges. Perhaps my favorite quote from that meeting came from Raju Shrestha, a YouthSave product champion at Bank of Kathmandu, when he said “It’s really nice to be able to stop talking about plans on paper, and start talking about what we did.” 

A young person puts on a T-shirt he won in one of the competitons during the launch.

By Rani Deshpande and Zebedee Mkala, Save the Children

On July 12 YouthSave partner Kenya Postbank officially launched its new “SMATA” youth account with festivities at the Ofafa Jericho high school in Nairobi.  The event was presided over by Canada’s Deputy High Commissioner to Kenya, with close to 500 youth in attendance.  Participating youth were treated to a comedy show and dance competition where the winners were awarded with T-shirts and had a SMATA account opened for them.  In total, about 130 accounts were opened during the launch.    

By Lissa Johnson and Julia Stevens, The Center for Social Development

Are YouthSave accounts attracting low-income youth? Are youth making deposits into their YouthSave accounts? Are there adjustments that would help youth to save more? These are questions we’re beginning to answer in YouthSave using data from the savings demand assessment in Ghana, Kenya, and Nepal.

The savings demand assessment, part of YouthSave’s multi-method research agenda, allows researchers to track youth and household demographics and account transactions over the life of the YouthSave project. The findings tell us something about who saves, how much they save, and what characteristics are associated with saving.