A bright financial future for 4,000 Kenyan pupils

CEDI continues to deliver on its promise of teaching Financial Capability Skills to over 4,000 children in Kenya. The first quarter saw the project makecommendable strides in terms of fostering financial capability skills, strengthening school child safeguarding systems, and furthering conversations with stakeholders in the Ministry of Education to embed the program into the national educational system.

However, the project implementation has been affected by the covid19 pandemics. Covid19 has seen schools close and have ban on public gatherings. Some of the project activities have been postponed till normalcy returns. The activities rescheduled for second quarter include the delivery of My Money Curriculum and developing capacity of the elected My Money Officials. My money officials are pupils and are to be peers within and outside the My Money Club. The capacity building was targeted at leadership skills and personal development.

As an organization, we continue to engage with our project beneficiaries during this pandemic. WhatsApp and virtual meetings remain the biggest channel of sending and receiving info between the organization and project beneficiaries. Other than covid19 safety awareness, we highlight the shadow pandemic; child abuses. Whereas all government efforts and priorities have been overshadowed by the covid19, key sectors of the economy remain neglected and insufficiently supported. This threatens the future, safety, educational outcomes and opportunities of our children. For this reason, we continue to actively sensitize project partners and beneficiaries on the need to safeguard our children at home. Recommendations we give are based on the online and media educational programming, to keep children at pace with the school curriculum.

Going forward, we are equally engaging the project teachers through virtual platforms. Zoom meetings are planned for the end of June 2020. With schools having closed for close to 5months now, CEDI is developing an online assessment tool to highlight the barriers and enablers of teachers to deliver online tutorials in rural parts of Kenya. We are remaining true to whole child development, and the need to inculcate positive social behavior amongst children.

Until then, we continue to follow up on the daily covid19 briefings and heed to recommendations of WHO and Ministry of Health.