Savings celebrations

One of my favorite (and longest-running) projects this year has been my savings and financial education sessions with a class of 7th graders. (Almost) every week since April, these boys have been saving one sole ($0.35) each and learning the basics of personal finances. Today was our last day of class for the year, so some celebrations were in order. My teacher counterparts and I took over the school auditorium and organized a chocolatada - a typical Peruvian Christmas custom where everybody drinks hot chocolate and eats panetón (fruitcake).

Goofballs

Cutting up the panetón

Once everybody was happily munching their treats, I was able to make my proud-teacher announcement: 35 out of my 37 students improved their scores on the financial education diagnostic test. This was a pre-/post-test that I first gave in April to assess how much the students knew about the topics I planned on teaching. April results showed that they knew very little, but November results showed an average improvement of about 90%! The kids seemed excited and proud of themselves, and were showing off their scores to each other.

Then it was time to liquidate their savings bank: each student had S/. 25 saved! And a couple super-enthusiastic savers had upwards of S/. 30 (they made sure to point this out to me :) ).

Tallying everyone's final savings

Making sure we had the right amount in the cashbox

Each student came up to receive their savings and sign their name on the register

The whole gang

I'll miss my weekly hangouts with these kiddos for the next few months (Peru's summer vacation), but hopefully we'll continue the savings bank next year!