fsd's financial education programme: evaluation and ... - FSD Kenya

iv • FSD’S FINANCIAL EDUCATION PROGRAMME: EVALUATION AND RECOMENDATIONS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
FinEd programme overview and evaluation
In December 2008, the FSD launched the 2-year Financial Education. This
programme was subsequently extended to December 2011. A dedicated
Project Manager (PM) was appointed to manage the programme.
The main aim of the programme was to ‘lay the foundations for a
comprehensive and sustainable national programme of financial education
in Kenya.’ The programme had four core outputs: (i) establishing a financial
education partnership; (ii) developing a preliminary framework for financial
education; (iii) establishing a financial literacy baseline; and (iv) piloting
approaches to financial education. Consumer protection was later added to
the programme and the FEP changed to a Financial Education and Consumer
Protection Partnership (FEPP). Some additional outputs were also added,
notably the execution of a Consumer Protection diagnostic.
1. FEPP
The FSD, through FinEd, provided secretarial services to the FEPP. The FEPP
was instrumental in creating awareness of financial education (FE) in Kenya,
although there were some challenges and shortcomings:
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The implementation of the four pilots overshadowed the activities of the
FEPP.
Active members were mostly those who applied for grant funding for
the implementation of pilots, rather than sector-level leaders.
The FEPP was not institutionalised and there was no clear exit strategy
for the FinEd as the Secretariat and consequently FEPP became dormant
when the FinEd came to closure.
Evaluation: partially achieved
2. Preliminary national framework for FE
A draft framework has been developed in consultation with the FEPP
members. The framework was designed at the end of the FinEd programme,
rather than at the outset. The framework has not been shared with or approved
by stakeholders and its recommendations not yet implemented. At the time
of evaluating the FinEd, there was no publicly available information on the
development and implementation of such a framework.
Evaluation: partially achieved
3. Financial literacy baseline
The programme design envisaged using FinAccess as a tool to establish an FE
baseline, by strengthening the FE section of FinAccess. A review of FinAccess
2006 was undertaken to inform the FE questions in FinAccess 2008/9 (the
baseline); and another review of the 2008/9 data was undertaken to further
strengthen the FE component of the FinAccess 2010 (the end-line). The two
sets of data from the Fin Access 20008/9 and 2010 yielded some valuable
insights into levels of financial literacy, but fell short of a comprehensive
assessment of the multiple dimensions of financial capability.
Evaluation: under achieved.
4. Pilots
Four pilots were implemented, namely: (i) the public media programme
Makutano Junction, implemented by Media-e; (ii) the Faulu pilot aimed at
Faulu clients and communities in the selected Faulu branches; (iii) the Equity
Group Foundation pilot aimed at the youth (primarily Kenyatta University
students); and (iv) the Plan International programme targeted at Schools.
The first two were large programmes and were primarily funded by DFID’s
Financial Education Fund (FEF). The FinEd programme funded the M&E
component. Three of the four used didactic models.
The pilots experienced significant challenges, notably the short timeframe
for implementation and the emphasis on M&E (which took almost as much
time as the implementation). The findings on impact are mixed and the
evaluation methods were inconsistent with some challenges of their own.
The large minimum amount required by FEF (GBP250,000) crowded out the
opportunity for testing smaller possibly more innovative approaches.
The Media-e and Equity pilots achieved their targets in terms of persons
reached while the other two pilots fell short of achieving their targets
(although the targets appeared to be over-ambitious). The evaluations of the
various pilots did not evidence a change in behaviour. This may partially have
been as a result of the limited implementation time of the pilots.
Three of the programmes have been replicated: Media-e has included FE
into a new series with support from Women’s World Banking and a number
of commercial Banks and Equity has significantly expanded its programme
with funding from the MasterCard Foundation. Faulu, is now implementing a
smaller adjusted version of the pilot with its own funds.
Despite these challenges, the pilots succeeded in creating much awareness of
FE among stakeholders in Kenya and beyond and several FE-related skills were
developed among the programme implementers.
Evaluation: partially achieved
Other observations:
5. Consumer protection was largely dealt with as an add-on, and
beyond the consumer protection diagnostic, little was done under the
FinEd to further support or implement consumer protection. The pilots
also did not incorporate components of consumer protection.