More secondary school students get involved in savings activities
More secondary school students get involved in savings activities
Ekphatthana Deposit-Taking Microfinance Institution (EDTMI) expects that the number of student depositors will be on the rise over the years ahead as currently there are over 40,000 accounts worth over 1 billion kip.
It credited some of that rise to the ‘Smart Kid Saver' project, which aims to help school children understand the importance of financial management at a young age and thus be able to save money to support themselves.
Speaking at the awards ceremony for the project on Thursday, EDTMI Director Mr Somphone Sisenglath said that this activity was conceptualised to enable students to save money themselves and not depend entirely on their parents.
“We came up with this idea to promote savings activities in schools. It also enables students to use their smartphones to make video clips about the importance of deposit accounts. Some 53 schools in Vientiane were targeted but so far only 22 schools have sent us a total of 32 clips. Eight teams were selected as finalists,” he said.
The video clips were posted on the bank's Facebook page and they achieved over 1 million views within two weeks after the clips were released on social media.
Mr Somphone said more students in Vientiane schools are now aware of financial management issues after the launch of a campaign on savings awareness which encouraged students to open their own bank accounts back in 2013.
The Bank of the Lao PDR's Financial Institution Supervision Department Director General, Dr Akhom Praseuth, said the project is important to promote savings because people can access and watch the video clips on social media.
“An increasing number of students are taking part by depositing their money with the bank. In the near future, this idea may be included in the curriculum of the Ministry of Education and Sports so they can learn about financial management,” he said.
Dr Akhom said people should not wait until they have a large sum of money to save or deposit it with the banks as they can save wisely from the smallest to larger amounts of money.
The presentations to reward various teams participating in the video project, which closed recently, saw students of Homsavanh School take out the major prize of 10 million kip.
The first runner-up was a team from Sisattanak Secondary School, who received prize money totaling 3 million kip, while the second runner-up Thongpong Secondary School received prize money of 1 million kip.
According to the survey by EDTMI, there has been a 20 percent increase in depositors since the launch of this project and it is expected that the number of depositors will further rise in the years to come.
