Experiment to teach fishing than to feed fish

In February of 2009, Hope House made a strategic decision to mandate the families of the Hope House girls to invest minimum of 50 rupees (about 90 US cents) each month in the post office fixed deposit account on a recurrent basis.  Objective of this program is to engage the families in children’s lives and to increase financial literacy among children. 

Many families expressed difficulty but we stood our ground and the families relented to start reluctantly.  Every month, we would show the post office passbooks to the families and to the girls to reassure them that their money is invested.  Months went by and as the money in the accounts started to grow, girls started getting excited and the families felt comfortable to continue to invest.

Fast forward to February of 2014, it will be five years since we started this program and two of our older girls will be finishing 12^th grade in April of 2014.  Their families invested 100 rupees each in their girls lives.  Last week when we checked their passbooks, each had Rs. 5800/- and by February, it’ll be 6K plus the interest that the post office pays at the end.  Both of them want to pursue careers in healthcare in Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore and this money will be used for joining them in the summer coaching to prepare them for the entrance exam.

Apart from learning about the importance of saving, what the girls have learnt (and the younger girls will continue to learn till they reach 12^th grade) is the dynamics of operations of a financial institution and in this case it is the post office.  They do not have the fear of filling deposit slips, interacting with the post office staff, analyzing their post office passbook, power of compound interest and demanding from their families to invest in their lives etc.

It was an experiment started in the face of lot of resistance from families but today many families regret for not investing more than stipulated 50 rupees/ month.  12^th graders are filled with pride to know that they’ll be paying from their own pockets to lay the foundation for their careers.  We couldn’t ask for a better outcome for an experiment that we started with the thought not to feed fish but teach them to fish.