Help a Student Stay in School in Uganda

With the Ugandan school term beginning on Jan 31st, we are about to start our second year of implementation.  We finished last year with 4,961 pupils in 81 schools saving just over 5 million shillings.

We have many goals for this year!  We hope to increase the number of pupils saving and improve the savings behavior of those that are.  This will include increasing the amount, frequency and continuity of savings.

One of the ways in which we hope to reach our goals, is by testing an add-on intervention of "parent sensitization."  We will randomly select half of our 78 treatment schools to be offered a general parents meeting to be run by one of our program officers.  The program officer will lead a discussion with parents about why education is important, how can parents support their children's education, what the exact roles and and responsibilities are assigned to various stakeholders under the government's policy of Universal Primary Education and how the Super Savers Program can help.  We will be interested to see what kind of effect this program could have.

Our program officers have been working to write a script to use when speaking to parents.  Here's an example, taken from program officer Sula's script: "It's important at this point to inform the participants that FINCA does not give interest on pupil savings.  I always use the slogan "kyosiga kyokungula" meaning that what you sow is what you reap."  We look forward to your interest and support as we continue implementation and plan for the endline data collection exercise, scheduled for the end of this year!