Between the 6th and 10th of May 2019, Aflatoun’s Asia Programme Manager, Lucky Ferdinand Lumingkewas, visited Nepal. Aflatoun International’s first intervention in Nepal was in 2008 with partner Child Workers in Nepal (CWIN) Concerned Centre. Since 2008, CWIN has been implementing Aflatoun through non-formal education for working children and children and youth in child care homes. CWIN implements the programme through a network of child care homes in Kathmandu, Panauti, Chitwan, and Biratnagar, among other areas, and also provides Aflatoun’s education to youth groups. In 2014, Aflatoun and UNICEF piloted an integration of Social & Financial Education in the national education curriculum. The integration was successful in integrating it with the ‘Social Science’ curriculum of grade nine. Now, more than 50,000 children have been participating the programme across the country. This gave us the motivation to visit Nepal to explore more approaches for advocacy.
The objective of this trip was two-fold: first to meet with existing partners to discuss the current status of the programme and second, to meet with new potential partners. Lucky met with UNICEF, the Ministry of Education, Curriculum Development Centre, Central Bank and implementing partners Samunat Nepal and CWIN. CWIN is currently the only implementing partner of Aflatoun in Nepal, employing more than 300 full time staffs including many of them work in several offices in district level. Currently, they are managing 10 on-going projects. Although they are having difficulties securing financial assistance, the Aflatoun programme still runs in several schools. He also visited two secondary schools in rural parts of Kathmandu where the programme is being implemented through extra-curricular sessions and after school class facilitators.
The second reason for this trip was to meet with organisations that are interested in the curriculum. World Vision Nepal, runs both a sponsorship and non-sponsorship programme and they provide education to 36,000 sponsored children. They are currently working in 7 provinces and 13 districts. In year 2021, they will start their new country strategy. Currently they work in four areas: Education; Protection; Health; and Resilience/DRR/Economic Development. They have been working in the area of ending child marriage in Nepal and in terms of economic development. They have income generating activities with poor women and were interested to know if the Aflatoun financial education curriculum for poor women in Bangladesh can also be used in Nepal. They are also interested in the Aflayouth curriculum for their Youth Entrepreneurship Development.
Additionally, the National Banking Institute (NBI) was also interested in collaborating with Aflatoun. They operate under the Nepal Central Bank and act as training wing of the Central Bank and supporting many capacity building initiatives including promoting Financial Education program for marginalized communities in Nepal. NBI just developed and launched its financial education digital programme. This visit resulted in NBI signing a MoU with CEO, Roeland Monasch in Johannesburg on June 19.
