The colour of money

The council is not short of expertise. It is starting a pilot programme to work out how to connect the “unbanked” to financial institutions. America is not the only country where doing something about the widespread ignorance of personal finance is on the agenda. Governments from Britain to Russia are declaring their commitment to financial education. Meanwhile, on March 17, a new campaign to promote financial literacy in the developing world was launched at a conference in Amsterdam. Called Aflatoun (“Explorer”), after a cartoon character based on a Bollywood star, it is the brainchild of Jeroo Billimoria, a social entrepreneur who previously worked with street children in India. Among other things, she founded a successful emergency 24-hour telephone service, called Childline. She found that many of the children she helped were entrepreneurial and became convinced that, given better education, they would have done well in life.

Ms Billimoria addresses herself to children aged between 6 and 14, whom most educators consider too young to understand money. Having begun with experiments in rural India, her non-profit organisation, Child Savings International, has piloted the Aflatoun course in 11 countries, including Argentina, South Africa, Vietnam and Zimbabwe, since 2005. It is now extending the course to 35 developing countries. Only recently, after suggestions from the Dutch central bank and the European Commission, has Ms Billimoria started to adapt Aflatoun for rich countries such as Britain, the Netherlands, Ireland and perhaps America. “My mistake. I never thought it would be needed in developed countries,” she says. If only.

Excerpted from ‘Getting it right on the money’ in The Economist, April 5