We got to do more than academics for them

It was in February of 2009, after deliberating extensively on the subject of involving the Hope House girls families in their own children’s over all development, decided to implement a program which forever changed the way girls are looking at themselves now.  We are hoping to take this experiment to the masses to replicate it.

Many of our girls come from the backgrounds where they do not have parents/ one parent/ abusive family dynamics.  Except for three girls, other girls have someone in their lives (uncles, aunts and grandparents) that they call them as ‘their own’ family.  Although the hope house does everything for the girls for the whole year, we felt that it is in the larger interest of the child that family must be made to invest in child’s life in some way.

Idea that was explored was to open a recurrent deposit post office account (like a bank fixed deposit) and ask the families to invest minimum of Rs. 50/- on their own child’s name.  There was a lot of resistance from the families but when we stood our ground, things began to fall in place.  Every month, family will give the money to our staff who invests in the post office account and each month the passbook is shown to the family and to the child.  We encouraged and counseled the families to be regular in investing and taught the children how ought to ask their families to invest in their lives.  

After few months of starting this program, change in the attitudes of the families was astonishing.  When they began seeing couple of hundreds of rupees in their accounts, they realized that they made a mistake by investing the least.  We were glad that at least they did it on behalf of the child.  

Fast forward to February, 2014 and the five year recurrent deposit tenure is completed and that means girls are ready to withdraw the money.  Highest amount withdrawn by one of our girl is Rs. 14, 360/- at an accumulated interest of 21.33%.

Coincidentally, our state (Tamilnadu) government started opening bank accounts to the school students with Rs. 100/- (little over a dollar) that comes along with an ATM card and a cheque book so we took advantage of this account to transfer the money to bank savings account.  Girls are free to keep the bank passbook and use the ATM card but in their own best interest, their expenses are monitored.  

 

M. Priya proudly displaying Karur Vysya bank passbook 

where she has more than Rs. 11,000/-

We know that these girls at the Hope House will never become marginalized like their families were because they had learnt the most important lesson of financial management - “Saving for the future”.  It was heartwarming to witness the two seniors who’ve withdrawn the money to use for college applications about the importance of saving more to the younger girls.     

Now we want to introduce our girls to the higher order information of financial management such as loan, credit, insurance and equity markets etc.  Think about the impact on India’s economy if only all the school going students of the country save Rs. 50/- each month.  

What do you think?  Do you have any suggestions that we can try which makes the nurturing complete and comprehensive?  Write your thoughts below in the comments section.