 I'm Reed Kramer, very pleased to welcome you here to New America. We've actually done a little bit of a redesign. We've got a new logo, a new space. This is my first time up here at the new podium. And I'm excited to be here. And I'll welcome you all and tell you that I direct the asset building program here at New America. We're broadly interested in exploring how savings and assets and access to financial services can promote economic security and mobility, both in the U.S. and around the world. And actually, my colleague, Ray Beshera, who started the program, is here in the house. So welcome back, Ray, to New America. Our event this morning is titled, A Multigenerational Approach to Global Poverty Alleviation, Experiences from Youth Save and Beyond. And you can join the conversation if you're Tweeters or are watching online at hashtag youthsave and hashtag global dev, DEV. I'll start the conversation by noting that in the global context, often when we talk about adolescence in youth, they often capture the attention of policymakers and others as economically problematic source of problems. But there's a great deal of potential if we think about how youth can be strategically engaged to promote their social and economic development. And one way to do this is to connect them to valuable financial services. Financial inclusion as a concept and particularly access to savings has been suggested as a means to support youth in navigating the transition to adulthood. And there is growing interest on the part of many stakeholders in exploring how financial inclusion efforts targeted at youth can promote poverty alleviation in the developing world. There's also a growing evidence base that assets matter, that they make a difference. Even small amounts can change behavior, can change future orientation in very important ways. So to advance this discussion, we're going to highlight work that's come out of this Youth Save initiative and begin linking it to other contexts. Youth Save was begun in 2010 as a five-year project to investigate the potential of savings accounts targeted at youth and their potential to promote development outcomes, financial inclusion, and do so in developing country contexts. The project's been active in four countries, Ghana, Kenya, Colombia, and Nepal. And the project was launched by the Mastercard Foundation with very generous support. It's been a partnership between a consortium of multiple organizations, including Save the Children, U.S., and Canada, the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis, and the consultative group to assist the poor, CGAP, as many people know it as, as well as New America. We've been very pleased to be part of it. We can now report that Youth Save is the largest scientific study of the financial and development impacts of savings on people age 12 through 18. Very impressive endeavor as a scientific, as a research project. But it's actually a lot more than that now. It's enabled us to see firsthand the kinds of partnerships and relationships that are necessary to successfully realize a financial inclusion of youth. And perhaps not surprisingly, it's also unveiled a very valuable perspective on how these types of interactions play out over across generations. It really was designed, though, as a research project, as a learning endeavor. There's been highly engaged research teams, program teams working in the countries, also working with local financial institutions. So it's been very valuable as an endeavor, learning from that experience. But the data that has been collected is offering a lot of insights that many of our partners are generating, and it's helping us kind of think about some very important questions in this field, such as what are the connections between youth financial inclusion and poverty alleviation? What's the role that financial institutions can play in this process? How can policy and the regulatory environment that is created in these different country contexts, can that play a supportive or a set of barriers that need to be overcome? And then what are the inner and intragenerational dynamics that are at play that matter? So today we're going to be featuring two recently released reports from the YouthSafe Project. The first was co-authored by Tanaya Kalerach from CGAP and her colleagues, and that focuses on the business case for youth savings. And the second was written by my colleagues here at New America, Scarlett Alderbot Green and Alita Sprague, and that dives in some depth to this question of the regulatory framework, some of the policy issues that are at play. So we're pleased to have both Scarlett and Tanaya on the panel today, and we're also going to hear from Lisa Johnson from Center for Social Development on some of the research findings, and we have an excellent discussant, Natalie Bronowski, who I'll introduce when we transition here. So looking forward to that discussion and engaging with all of you as well. The one insight that I'll just highlight that I've taken away from this experience so far is the importance of integrating financial access with other efforts. Often opening a savings account isn't enough. There has to be other forms of engagement in play, and in fact the financial inclusion efforts are most likely to be successful when they're linked with other kinds of efforts. In the case of youth, when thinking about youth, you really have to meet them where they are, and that's why focusing on things like education and training, which is often kind of what's immediately in front of them, become very, very salient and very real. For others it might be more entrepreneurial efforts, but meeting them where they are is a key factor. And there's also very interesting intergenerational dynamics at play here. The parents, the social context exert a great deal of influence as well. Youths have also worked in partnership with financial institutions, with banks as I mentioned, and the degree to which they see at different decision points their ability to take action, but from a long-term view of profitability from engagement, that often is another critical factor, as well as all the regulatory decisions that policymakers play a role in, either explicitly or kind of just how they unfold over time, and maybe haven't been thought about as clearly. I think what we're trying to do is raise some issues. If we're going to try to engage youth in access to financial services, what are things we need to think about when designing products for them? And finally, so anyway, these are all important considerations to take into view when we're trying to design interventions at scale. And I think that what we want to do is elevate a discussion that is constructive for policy makers and other stakeholders in the field. So anyway, those are some of my opening remarks, setting the stage to continue the discussion. Very pleased that I'm going to be welcoming Ruth Dweck up to the podium here. She's been our program manager at the MasterCard Foundation. She's been our lead and very engaged partner in youthsave. I want to thank her for her efforts, for being here at MasterCard Foundation. She manages a portfolio, a broad portfolio of financial inclusion projects that focus on institutional capacity building, particularly new products and new channels, as well as specifically youth financial services. And she's really worked throughout the world over her career to date, a real thought leader in building bridges, sharing knowledge, developing human capital. And she's going to describe how she sees some of the connections between financial inclusion and social protection programs and youth programming and how it links to anti-poverty efforts and then how it informing MasterCard's view on this work. So thank you, and Ruth, come on up. Thank you, Reed. And good morning, everyone. It's a real pleasure to be with you here today, hosted at this event by the Youth Save Consortium. Thank you to each one of the team members who've worked long and hard in preparing and planning for today. And it's a pleasure to have you in the room, but also those of you who are listening by web streaming. This past week, many of us participated in the annual Making Sense Summit to hear about some of the economic and social challenges facing the young people of our world and the initiatives that are addressing those challenges. We know there are many. In Africa, where we at the MasterCard Foundation concentrate our activities, the situation is particularly daunting. Some 78% of the 200 million young people in sub-Saharan Africa live on less than $2 a day, and approximately 48% of those live on less than $1 a day. And these young people are really disproportionately affected by high unemployment rates as the youth bubble of people aged 15 to 24 rapidly eclipses private sector growth. At the same time, on average, less than 5% of these young people have access to financial services. And while many providers express interest in serving young people, few are really equipped to do so. Recent research shows that giving young people tools to accumulate savings not only opens up economic opportunities, but it can also improve education and health-related outcomes. We know from YouthSafe and the other work that the Foundation has invested in that low-income young people can and do save money. In market research, they indicate that they are interested in channeling their savings to affordable and safe financial institutions. However, they often lack the exposure, the knowledge, and the opportunity to do so. And that's why YouthSafe was developed. And to date, over 100,000 young people have opened up savings accounts at commercial banks. The project was also structured with a very rich learning agenda. We wanted to learn very robustly and deeply about the development impact of savings accounts. We wanted to learn about what the difference and the influence of context, of national context makes on that work. We wanted to really understand deeply what the commercial interests and the business case discussions and scenarios looked like. And we wanted to know what kinds of products and services really seem to make a difference and really seem to meet needs. YouthSafe has reached significant milestones in the last four years, and today's event actually sets the stage for a final year of data collection, analysis, dissemination of findings, and most importantly, thinking through what these findings might mean for us, not only in financial inclusion, but more broadly. We'll be hearing shortly from our YouthSafe colleagues about some of the achievements and the learnings of this work, but I'd like to take a few minutes to tell you about the foundation, how we approach our work, and why we partnered with YouthSafe. The Master Card Foundation is focused on two programmatic areas around youth learning and around financial inclusion. Youth learning also incorporates a big component of economic opportunities for youth in addition to the educational inputs. We also believe in some fundamental approaches to meeting the challenges of development, and there are many. We like to think of these as the four C's of action, and in every way YouthSafe has been living testament to these principles, creativity, courage, collaboration, and commitment. Creativity means to imagine the products and services that respond best to the expectation and needs of the poor, while also making good business sense for providers. Courage, the capacity to take a chance, to try innovative ideas, to go where others have not gone in order to improve the lives of more people. Collaboration, none of us have the magic wand to eradicate poverty. We each however bring our own strengths and our own expertise. Working together we can think through solutions, we can learn from one another, and in that way have the surest way to have significant impact and really make a difference. And finally commitment, the ability to stick with it, to take a long term view, and to understand that all challenges will not be met in a month, a year, even in a few years, but they will be met. We all know that there can be no poverty reduction without economic growth, but economic growth in and of itself cannot achieve its full potential without everyone sharing in that growth and having the access we believe to the financial products and services that people need to achieve their life's goals, including and perhaps above all young people of our world. We also know that poverty is very complex, and breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty is one of the biggest challenges to overcome in order to bring lasting change. And that is why the Foundation Partnership on YouthSafe is so important to us. As Reid mentioned, the project works with commercial banks, with rigorous researchers, broad dissemination strategies, and multiple civic and public stakeholders. And it has the potential we believe to spur market innovations and to contribute to that global body of knowledge for both practitioners and policymakers. The Foundation's focus on Africa is very purposeful. We all know that Africa has achieved significant advances in economic growth, innovations, and often through the resilience of Africans themselves and their sheer ability to work around and even thrive in difficult circumstances. But a big question remains, will the growth be sustained? And more importantly, will it lead to equitable distribution and shared opportunity for all? They, Africa, accounts for just over 15% of the world's population. And according to some projections, Africa, however, may soon account for close to 50% of all extreme poverty in the world. To those of us at the Mastercard Foundation, these projections are not destiny, and they are not inevitable. They are rather a huge challenge. They are a development challenge, an intellectual challenge, and perhaps also an ethical challenge. While it is impossible to predict with certainty poverty trends, we all know their surprises, our understanding of what it takes to eliminate poverty is growing. And this is a challenge for the global community to seize the knowledge so that interventions can be as effective as possible. I know that you here today share an enthusiasm to do more work with the young people of our world, including African young people, to find the solutions that will help to continue to reduce poverty. Solutions that will enable millions of people to leave poverty behind and build safe, healthy, and prosperous lives. I am certain also that while many of these solutions are already being tackled daily by Africans themselves, surmounting some of these obstacles will also require the partnership and support of those in this room. And that is why the Mastercard Foundation's work with the Youth Safe Partnership is so important and so interesting for us. That is why we are also optimistic that African and indeed global development challenges will be met with creativity, with courage, collaboration, and that commitment. I look forward to the next hour and a half of discussions and conversations to hear also your thoughts and impressions and to learn from one another. Thanks for your attention and thanks for coming. Let me invite the panel up here who you'll hear from and they'll go in order. Lisa Johnson has worked at the Center for Social Development for a long time, a couple years, a long time member. Right now she's Director of Administration for the Center. She's responsible for managing the Center's finances and operations as well as overseeing their research projects in the area of asset building and civic service. Tanaya Calara is a member of customer centricity team at CGAP. Not on everyone's business card, customer centricity. And she's been really leading their work on youth financial services. And as I mentioned, she's the co-author of this report on the business case for youth financial services. She's been working on the UCAP project for the last four years. Has been a very valuable member of the team. My colleague then Scarlett Alderbad Green, Senior Policy Analyst here at New America. She focuses on policy analysis related to youth, their economic development, has a background in human and civil rights. And we've been really pleased to have her on the project for much of this past year. And then Natalie Bernowski is Chief Executive at Inclusion US, which is a new social enterprise that provides research on equitable economic growth and social inclusion. Their latest report was, I think, out on the table, focusing on youth employment and considers specifically the experience in five countries and how to prepare, look for, retain, and advance work for youth. She's kind of gone back and forth across the pond. She's worked in the US. She's spent a lot of time working in the UK advising politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. So I think we'll just go down the order. I'll wave at you if you're getting close to the end. And then we'll be able to have a conversation between all of us and engage with the audience as well. Thank you. Lisa. Great. Thank you very much. So welcome. Thank you again. This is a privilege to be here with all of you. Ruth already kind of alluded to it. But I wanted to kind of go over the four. I'm going to talk a little bit about the research. There were four main learning questions that we were asking. One is about the business case, which Tanaya works on. The other one is kind of the fundamental question about if the financial institutions will offer youth friendly accounts and services, will the young people take up these accounts? And will they in fact use these accounts? So that's one of the fundamental questions. And as part of that, we look at the savings patterns that may be associated with either the youth characteristics and the product characteristics. And that's some of the work I'm going to talk about today. The other questions are, so what matters here? And I think you alluded to it before, Reed, is that so what? So what happens to the child's well-being over time with savings and with taking up an account? And so we have done an experiment in Ghana, which looks at some of the outcomes of children's well-being, including things like academic achievement, health, and health behaviors, financial capability in terms of the knowledge and skills that they acquire with using financial services, and then other things like their future orientation and the youth aspirations. So that experiment is ongoing, and we will have results from that in the next few months. The other question we ask is just looking at the context in which the youth are living and talking to the youth through qualitative, in-depth interviews about their experiences in youth and how they save, what they think about it, but also talking to their parents and other stakeholders like school officials about their thoughts about how this works in their community. So those are the learning questions. And as I said, I'm going to focus on the savings demand assessment this morning and really hit some highlights. We're not quite finished with the report yet, so it's not available. We have an older report that's available out in the hallway if you'd like to take a look, and we will be building on that and looking at data from the time that the product was rolled out in mid-2012 through the last data collection point of May, 2014. So that's the timeframe. So I don't have all the numbers memorized, so I'm going to give you a couple of numbers off the top here. The question is, do the youth open accounts? And in fact, yes, they do. There is definite interest. Across the four countries, we have over 100,000 accounts that have been opened in just that short amount of time. And as part of the research, you may know we have to ask the young people if they consent to be in the research study, so we are looking at about 70,000 of those accounts as part of our research. Do the youth save? Yes, indeed they save. Over the four countries, they have saved about $1.8 million in that timeframe, so I think it's pretty clear these kids are interested and they're willing when they have a product that works for them. The other question really is, did the financial institutions reach the target population, which in you say was low-income young people? And in fact, we have about 42% who are kids living under $2.50 a day, so that population is part of the group. In terms of gender, we have about a 56-44 split with more boys than girls. But I will tell you that in Ghana, there were more girls that signed up for an account than boys, so it depends on the country in different contexts and nuances of cultural norms that we have to take into consideration. The age range was between 12 and 18, and in fact, the mean age is 16. So they are definitely capturing that population. And the majority of the young people do say that they've never had a formal account before. So we are reaching the kids that have not had this experience. And so I think the financial institutions have done a pretty good job in reaching out to their target population. So we don't have a lot of time this morning, so I'm just going to highlight a few things. And the question here is, what matters? What matters in financial inclusion and in building up financial capability? And I'm going to say context matters. I don't want to ever forget the fact that these are all different countries. They are all very different things. We got different findings in different countries for various reasons. Could be cultural issues. Could be the product characteristics. The products were not exactly the same across the four countries, so there are differences. And we are able to look at some of those differences. But the other pieces in terms of what we found is I'm going to list them, and then I'm going to go back and talk about a couple that relate more particularly to this conversation. We find that age matters, parents matter, location matters, the account rules matter, and product outreach matters. And some of these might sound pretty obvious, but I think that in terms of the age one is very interesting. The young people actually save more. And what is going on there? We hypothesize here that the young people, when we read the integrative case studies and what the youth say, the parents are giving the younger children money for their allowance or for leftovers from a school, from shopping, various reasons, gifts for birthdays, that kind of thing. Maybe that the parents are doing more of that when the kids are younger, and maybe the kids are finding other ways. But the younger children are saving more, and I think that really lends a lot to when we think about starting early, getting a running start, and starting that nest egg as early as possible. And at CSD, we often talk about accounts at birth. It would be ideal if we can do that, get them going. But this just lends another piece of information to that idea. Parents matter. What we found is that in Ghana and Kenya, young people could open an account with a trusted adult as opposed to a parent. A lot of these were, the accounts had to be opened by co-signature because they were under age 18. But interestingly enough, 40% of the group opened an account with a non-parent. That's a lot of the, there's a lot of people who open accounts, so that really helped to open accounts. But the interesting thing that we found is that savings is associated with a co-signature of the parent. So there's something going on there with the role of the parent and their level of participation. And again, when we look at what the youth say, they have said that their parents were encouraging. They helped them. They helped them get to the financial institution or to the school to help make deposits. There are things that are going on there that I think we need to pay attention to. Location matters. What we found is that the financial institutions whose branches were more active in going to the schools and opening the accounts with the children, with the young people and helping them to make deposits. So if they were taking deposits at the schools or places where the young people were, these branches had significantly more accounts opened at that branch. So we did this branch level analysis and indicated that that really is a role the financial institutions are playing, whether it's also working with financial education as well as the services that they offer. The other thing that we found is that account rules matter, both deposit rules and withdrawal rules. So what we're finding is a lot of the savings that's going on is the not withdrawing. So they're putting in deposits, but a lot of the savings is about simply not withdrawing. As the young people get older, they do a lot more withdrawals and particularly the young males are doing a lot more transacting. And we find this in accounts in Nepal. They're older kids, they're doing more of the transaction process. What's interesting in Columbia is though a different rule about deposits is that the way that account was set up, that young people had to set a deposit goal, a savings goal, an amount to reach. And what they found was this is all very well and we found more deposits were happening in that context. But what we also found is that there were more closures happening. And we had a lot more closing of accounts in Columbia and we think, well, it's possible that they had reached their goal. And if they reached their goal, then close their account, then we need to be thinking about the design features. If we wanna think about intergenerational accounts across the way, we definitely wanna keep those savings accounts open. And the last thing I'll say I'm getting the high sign here is that product outreach matters. They did a lot of direct outreach to low income neighborhoods. They were able to gather the young people to participate. But we also find that the savings is associated more with people who said they learned about the account through mass media and through friends and families and that. So I think this dual approach actually works. It allows us to, allows the younger people who may have a little bit more resources, helps the financial institution as well in terms of the business case. And, but it also makes it more inclusive so that everybody gets to participate. So I'll stop there. Great. Hi, great to be here. And Tanya from C-CAP, just picking up from where Lisa left off really. So in Lisa's analysis, we're seeing, yes, youth can save. And then hopefully through the impact research that CSD is doing, we'll see that youth saving actually has impacts on other outcomes like health or education. So then the question really is, so this seems like a good intervention if you're looking at it from the poverty angle. But then who should do it? Who's the right actor to be offering these products? And really two options there. One is the private sector and the other is the public sector. So I'll come back to the public sector, but really with the private sector that's the work that we look at is the question is, even if this is a great product, can financial institutions offer savings products to youth in a way that is sustainable for them that makes business sense for them? And so that's the question that we look to answer in our research. And I'll give you the punchline first. The punchline is it depends. I don't think there's a clear, there's a categorical answer to in every context, in every situation, with every institution, with every kind of customer, yes, there is a business case for youth savings. I don't think that's the case. It really is depending on the context, and I'll come back to these drivers, but depending on the context that an institution operates in given its own institutional structure, given other options that it's looking at, in some cases, targeting the youth segment makes sense. So really, when we looked at what makes youth an attractive segment for banks, for banks for other financial institutions, and in youth, say, we really looked primarily, we work with regulated banks, but in our research, we broadened a little to say, let's look at other types of institutions as well, institutions that have more of a double bottom line, are more socially driven institutions, that function as like we have Kenya Post Bank as part of Youth Save, which is much more a postal, has its origins in the postal network. So anyway, so we looked across that spectrum of institutions and did some macro correlations, did a lot of qualitative work, so deep research, qualitative research with these institutions, and we saw really there are drivers of the business case at four levels, at the market level, at the institution level, at the segment specific level, and at the profitability level. So profitability level is one that we all understand much better, I think there's a lot of conversation around as a product, does savings make sense? Does it not make sense? Can low income savings ever pay for itself or do you actually need to, only when you look at cross-sell and bundling with other products, does it make sense? So that's that bottom layer, so I'm not going to talk a lot about that. So let me start right at the top layer, which is the market level. And the interesting thing we found there was in more competitive markets, youth savings are actually a better, more attractive option for financial institutions. Why? Because at age 24, if there are 15 banks that are looking to attract this customer, it's an extremely competitive market. So in that kind of market, an institution might say, actually if I go to youth at age 12 and get a customer into my bank much earlier and then they end up staying with me over the lifetime, this really makes sense for me. And then the regulation of course has a huge part to play in this. And I'm just going to touch on a couple of the drivers at each of the levels. At the second level, at the institutional level, the big message there is really it's not, maybe this is not a product for every institution. So institutions should think carefully whether one, whether what their opportunity costs are. So if they're in an environment where there are lots of other projects that they can actually invest in, there are other products, they hire margin segments of the population that they still are going to reach. This product probably doesn't make sense for them. This segment doesn't make as much sense for them. But in other markets where the opportunity costs are lower, it makes more sense for institutions. I think the other important one here is if you look at time frames, institutions that need to make profits in the next quarter, in the next semester, in the next year, youth savings are probably not your bank for the buck product for you. This is a product that needs institutions to fundamentally look at a customer versus a product. So if you say a youth customer over their lifetime, yes, this customer makes sense. And I'll come back to that. That's I think one of the intergenerational pieces of this. But over their lifetime, it makes sense for you. But today, this customer probably doesn't pay for themselves. So what are those time frames that an institution actually has to play with? At the segment specific level, we really think in terms of youth transitions rather than ages. And they map roughly to ages, but in different contexts, these ages and transitions are mapped differently. So it's really what transition do you want to facilitate? And this goes back to my point about the time period. If you need to make profits in a fairly short time frame, you're probably going to look at youth that are in that working age kind of spectrum because they're already working today, tomorrow they're going to need a housing loan and need other products, they're probably starting families. So that makes more sense. Versus if you have a longer time frame and you can actually go to younger youth and each of these has its benefits. Older youth pay off today, younger youth pay off later, but you have probably a loyal customer that's going to stay with you for longer. So those are the trade-offs that institutions need to think about. And then on the profitability, I'll talk less. I think there's stuff on marketing, on product, on operations, delivery, each of these choices make differences. I think if you look at the multi-generational topic that we're talking about today, one, I think a big driver on the business case side is cross-sell. And one of the things we saw when we went into the project, we said, maybe one of the drivers is if youth enter the bank, they actually bring their parents in with them. And our experience, you know, both in the youth-sale project and with other institutions has been, it probably works the other way. If parents, parents who are financially included actually bring in their children to the banks. And so as a marketing strategy, number of banks are saying, okay, if we already have this segment of customers, can I actually go to their children, which is an easier way for me to bring youth into the bank? And then just a last point as I transition to Scarlet, I think there's never a point when I have a conversation about the business case without the policy case coming up. So really the question is, you know, in some cases, maybe it makes sense for financial institutions to pick up the ball and actually offer these products. And in other situations, if you're saying there's a strong social impact from offering youth savings, maybe the government and the public sector actually has a larger role to play. And again, over there, if you think through youth transitions, at each stage, if you think about transitions around learning, around working, around health, around starting a family, and then some transition around like a civic sense, each of these transitions, there's a role that finance can play. But like Reed said, finance is not the be all and end all. In many cases, that's not even, I think the most important intervention in making these transitions. So I think it's really thinking about these transitions more holistically and the role that finance can play. And if as a combination of public and private sector, we're able to ease each of these transitions, those multi-generational effects actually, I think, come together much more strongly. So I'll stop there and transition to Scarlet. Great, so actually our brief is outside. I'm gonna talk a little bit about how to create regulatory environments that foster youth savings. And particularly at financial institutions, not just commercial banks. But I think what Tanaya has said is really critical in considering whether this should be viewed through the possibility of a public sector intervention or a public sector subsidizing the private sector in some way. The way this project was created, there are subsidies in place to roll out these products, which in some cases really sort of elevate the business case. And so in looking at the policy considerations, we really have to think about in the absence of that, how do we sort of deal with the tensions between what the banks need for this to be profitable in the short or long term, and then how we deal with the needs of youth. Particularly as we think about minors or more vulnerable youth. And those are really in some cases competing prerogatives. So we wrote the brief, my colleague Alita Sprague and I as a read pointed out. And in sort of crafting it, we looked at five different kind of questions that we wanted the brief to address. In addition to giving some policy options for governments or other stakeholders seeking to create regulatory environments that would foster financial inclusion through financial institutions. So the first was, what are the competing interests at play here? What risks my youth have if they are engaging with banks? And then what risks are there to banks in engaging with younger youth or youth who are maybe not educated about the financial sector? But what are also the benefits to youth, right? So we need to balance those two things. And then what are the sort of, as I said, potential pitfalls from this approach and this perspective? And can those pitfalls be mitigated through education or through combining this intervention with some others? And Natalie will be speaking a little bit more about that. And then at the very least, we really have to think about agency of youth. And the degree to which youth in the developing world really are working, probably younger than in a lot of the developed world. Many of them are starting families at a younger age. And there really is this impulse for rights and inclusion, both into the economy and into society at large. And so is there a way to create an environment where youth can both be protected to some degree, but then also where they can have agency and they can make decisions because there has been an infrastructure of education around financial services set up such that they can really assess the risks of owning a bank account in a bank. They can understand what a minimum balance is. They can understand what a fee is. And that, in the way that we sort of thought about this, the younger the age of access, the sort of more protective mechanisms that you have to have in place. And of course, and so then the fifth is, so in maximizing the benefits to youth, then what do we can do in order to sort of control the risks to the financial institutions? And so again, it's sort of this constant balancing if we're gonna look at private sector engagement and sort of the solutions in the banking sector. So our conclusion was also that context matters a great deal, which I guess this is just what you're gonna hear over and over today. Certainly, if you're thinking about Argentina or Columbia or South Africa, it's not the same regulatory or even oversight scenario than in say Somalia or the DRC. So we really have to look at the context. And so our recommendations are in some senses broad and they depart from our experiences in youth saving other research as well. But then the sort of answer is we'll look at the framework in the country and look at the capacity for regulation and look at the capacity for oversight and look at the place of youth, specifically the more vulnerable youth. So in our case, we looked at, for example, orphans, girls, youth who are living in extreme poverty. So those are youth that typically would have less recourse if something happened in terms of they think that there has been a loss on their account and they can't access their money. Those are youth that sort of structurally have less access to recourse and who might also have less access to education or to a guardian willing to advocate for them. So context matters. Then so we basically looked at in terms of these general recommendations and specific recommendations and I wanna make sure that I leave enough time for Natalie and then also for a discussion with you all. So I'm gonna sort of skip ahead a little bit. But I'm happy to talk about a lot more. So again, as you relax the regulations or sort of broad recommendation is then you also look at the degree to which you can amp up oversight logistically. And then specifically we looked at two barriers. The first one is the age at which a youth can take ownership or transact under an account at a financial institution. And those vary widely, but in most countries, the provision is that the age of majority. Of course, the project has focused significantly on access to 12 through 18 year olds and almost no context in Nepal for out of youth save is the age of majority above 18. So in Nepal, it's 16. And so in considering that threshold, can we lower or can we relax that threshold in a way that allows access for younger youth while as I said, retaining the protections? And then the second one is identity. Identity requirement is huge. And so I'll start backwards and sort of give a few of the recommendations and then turn it over to Natalie. So in terms of identity, most banks, most financial institutions require some type of government issued identity card or certificate in order for you to be able to open a bank account. And that's a huge barrier. We've heard from our bank partners, they've had to turn youth away because of the lack of that. And so in the youth save context and in few others, and we go into it more in the brief, there have been some flexibilities in terms of the identity required instituted. One of those has been, for example, accepting a letter from a school indicating that yes, this is the person's name and this is how old they are and certifying that, a letter perhaps from a tribal authority. And so those are some options to which maybe a youth can prove they are who they say they are, which is one of the primary concerns of the identity requirements. And then that they are the right age, so that they qualify for whatever the financial product is, but then also that they are of the contractual age and if not, then there are some other things that we can do. However, as you sort of relax the requirements on identity, which really in the developing world, in some countries, a vast majority of youth have not even registered their birth and much less have a government issued identity card. There are costs and administrative barriers to that. So as you relax that, the bank or another financial institution might become a little bit nervous in terms of being able to meet, know your customer regulations and in order to really sort of know who it is that they are providing services to. So one option around this, in the youth safe countries, for example, where we have had co-signers for the accounts is retaining for the adult co-signer on the account, the sort of more elevated regulations. So the adult might be able to present a certificate of citizenship or whatever the identity requirement might be. And then, so I'm already getting, Rita's letting me know that we're almost done. But so the second requirement is control. And so as you've heard a little bit about, there is some research indicating that actually being able to control your account has certain benefits to you in terms of psychosocial development and then in terms of learning about your personal and household finance. And then also we've heard over and over again that youth are very interested in having control over the money they're depositing into the accounts for whether they earned it from work or whether they received it from parents and having it be their own. And there are a number of regulations that are presently barriers to that. Among them are the co-signer requirement which I indicated. And so relaxing that or allowing youth to have multiple co-signers, although parents are associated with the rate of savings in order to make something attractive to youth and make youth want to engage with that long term and perhaps have some of the effects that Natalie will be talking about in conjunction with other interventions. It may behoove us to sort of consider whether a teacher or a trusted friend or an organization in the case of youth who don't have a guardian can be a co-signer on an account. And I will say the last thing is in terms of these interventions we really need to think through the transition process. So if we make access a little bit more flexible so that younger youth can bank and so that youth who maybe don't have a parent as a co-signer or who want to not have a co-signer can bank then we need to think about what the relaxation of those rules does once the youth reaches the age of majority. In the case of Nepal for example in the youth save project at the age of 16 those accounts become locked until the youth can provide proof of identity. So the sort of flexibility stops at the age of majority. And so we really need to think about that because access is not just about having a place to deposit your money that is safe but it's also about having access to it when you need it for education or emergencies. I mean that's the whole point. So in terms of multi-generational issues as you can see a lot depends on the willingness of banks and on parents to be involved and the willingness of a broad range of stakeholders to sort of see this as an intervention that can have long-term effects. And so Natalie will wrap up this. Well thank you. My name is Natalie Bernofsky I'm with Inclusion US we're a branch of the, an independent branch of the Center for Economic and Social Inclusion in London. And what a delight it is to be here with the panel today and with you. We've been interested in financial inclusion strategies for quite some time really since the New American Foundation originally met with us in London back in 2005 we believe it was trying to remember. At Inclusion we promote economic and social inclusion in the labor market. However in the run up to the great recession, the global recession, we recognized that the labor market policy developments globally was starting to align with the question and the concern about asset development. So we now at our own organization have a Center for Responsible Credit and those two policy streams are aligned on a daily basis. I thought I'd start by saying that because we've recognized the need to make the change. In some of the policies I'll mention I should say that I'll be mentioning examples from both developed and developing countries. We had a conversation amongst us on the panel that this was a good idea. If the global recession revealed anything it's that all countries can learn from one another in terms of financial services and how they are delivered. I'll mention three key policy themes. The first is youth employment policies. The second is city and regional economic development strategies and then the third will be child poverty strategies. First on youth employment. Just listening to the evidence that has come out of this work we see a huge opportunity for the evidence on asset building to align with youth employment strategies. It's hard to know where to start when we talk about this because almost every country on the planet has an elevated youth unemployment number in the run up to and through the duration of the recession. Many of those youth unemployment rates are still elevated although we can identify a handful of countries where you actually can't tell recession from youth unemployment which is very interesting. But I'm quite interested in what happens when young people are unable to find work. If we look at what we would consider developed countries like Spain, like Italy with youth unemployment rates at 45 and 50 percent we think that there's a real question about what happens to assets that have been developed up to that time. What happens in that time period when a young person is looking at potential unemployment of let's hear it six, seven, eight years and any scarring effects that can come out of that. So we think national youth unemployment strategies are a perfect setting for the asset building conversation. We'd like to point to India on this front. The new prime minister Narendra Modi is putting in place a national skills strategy very much focused on the skills development of young people. There are I think upwards of 34 different sectors for which young people are being trained to enter the economy. And so there really is a key transition period like you mentioned between training and school and the beginning of that first job in the labor market. How can asset development and that policy conversation fit into all of that national policy and that practice based implementation? We're also seeing changing definitions in what employment means. I'm going to mention the term entrepreneurship and also social entrepreneurship. Young people more and more are being attracted to jobs that have a social impact. This can be in the for-profit sector, it can be in the nonprofit sector, it can be somewhere in the gray in between. But young people are increasingly attracted to employment opportunities that improve their local communities. I also want to mention that this idea of entrepreneurship, particularly in the developing countries, doesn't actually mean going out and securing venture capital for your million dollar idea. It can mean selling t-shirts at a roadside stand. More and more we're understanding this idea of entrepreneurship in developing countries as activating one's own skills to generate income. And I think that that will have implications for how income is generated and how money is saved and how assets are built over time. Another point about the gap between school and work, we're really starting to see a renewed global interest in apprenticeships. What does it mean to earn while you learn? And how does this set the stage for young people trying to buy a home, but also pay the bills at home and perhaps support the family? By the same token, we're starting to see even farther down for this, for apprenticeships, of course I'm speaking about young people aged 15, 16 to 24 years old, but even farther down into school systems, we're starting to see the development of workforce development policies, much more intensive conversations about careers at the middle school ages, and many more interactions with employers. So what does that mean in terms of setting the stage for career development over time? I'd like to talk too about public employment services. Almost every country on our planet has some sort of publicly funded employment service. This for many young people is the front door to attaching to the labor market. And I tell you, I can give you a very long list of job centers that would be interested in talking about perhaps a joint job search asset development app. I very much see this as on the street opportunity for these two policy areas to blend together. In terms of city-wide strategies, just changing focus for a moment, we hear so much about cities and city regions as the engines of economic development. And this has really become much more pronounced coming out of the global recession. I'm not just talking about the benefits to city residents, but to residents within quite broad city regions. And I think there's a real opportunity here, particularly for financial institutions with philanthropic arms to sit down with economic development to talk on a broad scale, a very large scale about what it means for bringing jobs, bringing investment, even foreign direct investment into a city, and how those assets can be developed by individuals as well. So we're starting to see a lot of this in the United Kingdom, where there is now a national strategy for financial inclusion that very much is being interwoven into local economic development in city region strategies. And finally, I'll talk a bit about child poverty targets. I love the word target, mainly because they speak to our aspiration. They are long-term policy tools that really can help us focus where we put our best efforts. There are a series of child poverty targets around the world. The original one, I would say, could be attributed to Prime Minister Tony Blair's launch of the UK Child Poverty Target in 2000. It's a 20-year target. Can you imagine a policy focus that lasts a generation? And we also saw strands of this in the Millennium Development Goals. Europe 2020 has child poverty targets for the 28 countries of Europe. We're starting to see this replicated in Australia and even here in the United States there's talk about a national child poverty target within our own Congress. These policies tend to have a double-barreled approach. They tend to focus both on early years interventions and investment and the maximization of income. And I think that there's a real opportunity to talk about asset development in that context. And I think finally I'll conclude just by saying there's still time to do more on Millennium Development Goals. The timeline is 2015, but certainly when we're talking about reducing the proportion of people in many countries that are in extreme poverty, there's much, much more that both government and financial institutions can do. Thanks, a lot to address there. Very helpful. So we've got a really smart room. I can tell that already. So I want you to think about things that you wanna contribute to the conversation. My former colleague, Jamie Zimmerman joined us and she ran our USA project for a number of years when it was getting started. So Jamie, if you've got insights, please. Let me also just start the kind of engagement here by asking a little bit more about some of the family dynamics both in the project, Lisa, and also how it interacts with some of the business case and the policy. Some of these, we talked about how in some places it could be a strategy to engage with parents who are already customers of the bank. But I know that a lot of the people in the use-save experience were also first-time getting experience with financial institutions. What showed up in the data about who participated and what their previous level of interaction with financial services was? In terms of the young people, the majority, 80% or more of the young people had not had any experience or reported that they had not had any experience in the formal financial sector. We did ask them about their head of household and many, I think the majority, but only about the majority of the head of households had some experience as far as the young people knew. But we're currently running some analysis and I don't have the data at this point in time to compare this financial exposure between kids who had absolutely, the kids and the household who had absolutely none versus the young people and the adults who both have had prior experience to see if there's any differences that we can see in terms of characteristics or savings. So I can't give you that information yet, but we are looking at those two areas. And I can say also, logistically speaking, we have had youth report holding onto their savings and not being able to make it to the bank until they have a parent that can accompany them. So how that relationship works in terms of the parents facilitating access to the banks or whether the banks are coming to school is absolutely critical. And it's been a real obstacle too if the parent doesn't have a relationship with an institution like that, yes. And then, obviously I'm also taken by the interaction between the business case and the policy case for this work and there's a lot, and it seems like if a little more attention to the regulatory environment was paid by the policy makers, it could actually spur some interest and business opportunities. And any more comments for each other on your respective contributions here, some of the interactions? Well, I just wonder if it has to happen within a regulatory framework discussion or if it can't happen in the rooms where employment and education policies are being designed. I don't know if that's... I couldn't agree more. We did a round table with policy makers sometime last year from eight countries and really our big learning from that and we actually had policy makers from different ministries. So it really is some, and really the anchor ministry for youth in different countries is very different. So sometimes there is a youth ministry and they are the ones anchoring that conversation because we're talking financial inclusion often the ministry of finance is at the table, education, sometimes it's youth and sports, it sits with sometimes gender and youth. So it really depends by context, but I absolutely agree, especially if you think about kind of transitions and how you're, and the fact that finance is one piece of this puzzle, I think it's actually quite important to have a broad policy conversation across different parts of government. Yes, and what we found through the project as well, I mean, sometimes as much as the bank having the interest in doing this and then getting its lawyers in a room and saying, okay, so this is the regulation, how can we interpret the regulation to allow for more flexibility? And sometimes there is quite a gray area there. All right, let me see a show of hands of questions and comments. Patricia's in the back and it's gonna be circulating the mic. Let's start from the back and we'll work our way up. Good morning, I'm Steve Culbertson from YSA Youth Service America. My question is, what is the role of other young people in driving some of these strategies? You talked a lot about parents, but we know that young people listen to other young people more than they listen to adults. How do we tap into that and really take advantage of it? Yeah, social context. I can tell you that when we look at the product outreach as I think I mentioned a little earlier is that we did ask the question about how kids learned about the account. Many, many, many of them and it's also associated with savings more is through friends and family. That was a huge part of the puzzle. So however way product outreach is happening, they are still doing one to one, talking to each other, whether it's at school, at a youth club, all of those things are still playing out. And there is quite a bit of evidence on children's savings clubs and sort of how that generates interest. And they can also be there to sort of support each other and set goals. And we've had some very interesting evidence coming out of youth savings. I won't say evidence because it's not sort of data driven, it's more qualitative. But what youth have chosen to do as a group as a result of having savings or to build assets. And we have, for example, in Kenya, youth who have decided to build gardens to accumulate assets. And it does require a level of mentorship from adults, but it's definitely also a youth enterprise. We also, can I just also add one other piece was, it's a very, very, very small portion. But there are some young people who said they learned about this account through the internet. So this technological piece is probably gonna expand as well as we all. Through their phones. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Which by the way is increasingly how young people are looking for work. You know, the phone is the front door. Okay, right here. Thank you. Good morning, my name is Jason N. Sminger. I'm with the University of Maryland. I'm actually an agriculture economist, so it's funny that my question should be about the rural urban divide and what you found in the data there. I noticed skimming through the report that you've put out, Lissa, that there's not a lot of discussion and even some of the questions, there's this head of household works in agriculture, but I don't really see a lot of rich data and we know that there is a consistent problem in the developing world with access to financial services and credit between urban and rural settings. So I'm wondering, you know, what, just sort of broad question, what you've looked at there, if there's plans in the future to try and gauge that and what discussions went on around that. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Jason. We did try to look at that. A lot of the financial institutions are located more in the urban settings. So it was difficult to collect and remember, I'm talking about the savings demand assessment data. So when we collected information, we had only, you know, a few questions that we could ask the young people when they were signing up for the account. So that is not as robust as I would like to see, but we do, we are looking at, we did try to do an assessment of, well, okay, Branch, were you located in a rural setting or were you looking at an urban setting? And what I can tell you, and it's a little bit more from the integrative case studies work, is that some of these young people had to, you know, walk a long way to go to a branch. And so what was happening is, one of the reasons financial institutions went to the schools and to the youth clubs is because it was easiest access possible for the young people even to be able to participate. And so to me, this access issue, first of all, to open an account, and then we can talk about account usage, but just to get that account open, and I will tell you another issue related to that has to do with the gender piece, is because in some countries, girls are not allowed to just walk about on their own to get wherever they need to go, and that's another barrier to them in terms of how do you access them, and so that's a whole another level of discussion. But yes, we will try to do more of that, and probably we'll look at that by country as opposed to try to look at it across country. I'd like to just chime in on that question. If you take a broader view of the financial inclusion lens, physical proximity is a huge barrier in most of the world, and so a lot of the work that the foundation works in and not in this space is around trying to push those frontiers, and there's promise around technology, and so we have a fair bit invested in that space to try to just do that. There's also a lot of promise in informal approaches, and including in our work with youth, a lot of the work in rural areas has been very well done with informal savings groups. I'll say in general, I think we've realized that there were some additional impediments without of school youth for the project. That was another big divide, whether so I think a lot of the overwhelming majority of the accounts were able to reach the youth that were engaged in school. It's a little different than urban rural, but it's another dimension. And I will say, just very quickly, in terms of data collection, you also have to think about how many questions are you willing to fill out at a bank or on follow-up, and so there are limits to that as well. Just a comment to build on what you were saying, Reed. I think if you look at financial inclusion, for financial, from a financial institution's perspective, you know, going to youth itself as a segment is already a high bar to cross. And then if you're then, and each of these layers that you're adding is I think a higher and higher bar. So absolutely aspirationally, they should be getting there. And I think, you know, the conversations around mobile and all of that are very useful. But I think when financial institutions think about it, they think, okay, already going to youth is a big deal. Then if you want me to go to rural youth, that's a harder thing to do. You want me to go to out-of-school youth where there's no aggregation of these youth, that's a harder thing to do. So I think these are all at the first instance, banks are really going to say, what are my lowest hanging fruit in this youth segment? Can I go to them before I go, you know, progressively on? Yeah, thank you. Okay, let's keep moving forward here. Maybe we'll start there, then go one, two, three, and keep coming. Hi, Patricia Langen with Save the Children US. Was there any correlation between informal savings activity and opening savings account at these formal institutions? We, I don't have the data on the informal savings of those particular youth, so it's not possible to assess that. What's an example of that? So in markets, testing, I mean, to try to determine what kind of things, what kind of accounts youth would be attracted to, I mean, there was a lot of data in terms of youth just saying, yes, I save, I save in a tin can, or I save in a shoe under the bed or on the mattress. So, but in terms of sort of correlating that, we don't have that, right? Okay, go there and then to you. Oh, can I actually clarify that, just one piece? But one thing that we, I'm remembering, there's so much data, my apologies. One thing that we did hear from the young people is they did talk about, sometimes the financial institutions would give them a little pocketbook or a wallet or something, and the youth would talk about, you know, I put it all in here, or I give it to my dad, and I have him save up a little bit, and then we take it to the financial institution to make our formal deposit. So it is occurring, it's just that I can't give you that systematic analysis. Hi, Maria Perdomo from UNCDF. Lisa, that was very interesting, most of the findings that you said, and one in particular caught my attention. Correct me if I'm wrong. So you said that more accounts were opened when it was, when it didn't require the signatory of parents, right? Like other adults different from parents, but you also found that usage was greater in those that had been- Savings was greater. Exactly, savings were greater in those that had been, that had the parents as a signatory, right? Okay, so would it be possible, would it be possible to say that those perhaps that were open with other adults that were different from parents, are more vulnerable youth? And then you can draw a correlation between usage that because of those youth that are most vulnerable, the usage was lower, not because the signature was another person, and this is just because then we all know, or at least what we've seen is that in those countries where the regulatory, and you've seen that as well, where the regulatory framework allows us to open accounts at a lower age, uptake is greater. So if we're saying that, I'll have a hard time convincing policy makers if we found oh, usage is greater when the parent is involved. Would it be possible to draw that conclusion? Well I think that no, it's not necessarily because I think the young people who are taking up these accounts, some of them are in boarding school and they don't have parent access, so they have a trusted adult or a teacher who is actually the one who is the trusted adult. So if they're in boarding school, are they more vulnerable? I mean I leave that up to you to answer. It also could be someone who's in a domestic situation in another home, not in their own parent's home. So those of you who are in some of these countries will know some of the different kinds of situations that a young people could be in that's not necessary, and I don't know what you mean by the most vulnerable, but they might not be living with their parents in that time frame. And we should clarify, it's not usage, it's amount of savings. Right, so that's different. So in terms of sort of the profitability for the bank, the amount in the accounts matters more in some ways. If you're taking the short term look, then the number of accounts opens. So the transactional differences, I don't know if you can speak to that, but the youth, the correlation is between youth who had parents as a co-signer and the amount of savings that they had. And also if you're careful with usage, because in the report I found myself doing the same thing is usage isn't necessarily positive, right? You could be withdrawing. So usage is both deposits and withdrawals. But it shows engagement. It shows like I've got an account, I'm gonna use it. That's true, that's true. And it depends on what you think about withdrawing. So and if these are savings, it just begs the question about what is the purpose of the account and how long do you wanna keep it and where are you going with that account? But I will just the last thing related to that. So this and then also what you said in terms of convincing policy makers. So like in Columbia, for example, a six year old can go into a bank and open their own account with their idea and in their own name, they don't need a parent as long as they can sign their name. But if you talk to a banker, if a six year old by themselves comes into a bank to open an account, that's a totally different scenario than what you see from the regulatory environment. So there's a high degree of sort of education and facilitation that has to happen as well. Thank you. Let's go with you and then the gentleman behind you, two rows behind you. Excuse me. I'm Marjorie Masieda and I'm an independent consultant. I work in health, youth in health. And I'm curious, you mentioned implications for education and health. How far did you look into that? And I'm thinking of people save money when they withdraw, do they use it for health? I don't know if you could comment anything. I unfortunately cannot because those are part of the experiment and the end line data has just been collected and so they are right now in the middle of analyzing that data. They will be able to get to address some of those questions. We just don't have the data to tell you today. Good morning. Abdul Karim Kulivali from the MasterCAD Foundation. So I would like to thank you for the presentation and the quality of the information that were provided. And I consider also that this is a preliminary finding. There will be some more to come as you will dig more into the data analysis. But looking at like some of the questions that was raised and in the presentation, you are also talking about the age and that young people save more than the older among them. But I think also in terms of related to the questions about vulnerability and the relationship with parents. So I assume that in the future, when we'll dig more in the report and the data analysis, we will have opportunity to try to put and to determine the key variable that's kind of related to that. What is the most, what makes the most difference between the younger, the kids, the younger and the older in terms of saving this one thing? And the second aspect is related to the context. So in the presentation, you've talked about that the context make a difference between its matter in terms of the saving account. So I was wondering which aspect of the context that you find was the most associated with opening a bank account or withdrawal if the initial data that I allow you to... Yeah, that's a complex question actually. But it's a... I can give you a short answer if you'd like. I will give you a preliminary answer. And that is a lot of this, a lot of savings has to do with less withdrawals. So they're just not taking, as you get older, you know, you have more expenses, you have things you have to purchase, school supplies, that sort of thing. So we find that as the young people are older, they are significantly taking more withdrawal. So then the savings process begins to go up and down, right? So that's an important piece of that whole puzzle. So I will start with that, and then we can talk further. I might, if I could just tag on to that. I think that my comment may go beyond the data and the research, but I really think that there's cause to focus on this very critical time that goes beyond just the opening of a bank account into this transition between school and work, because it is so very fragile. What actually happens to assets that have been built up up to that time? And what is happening in countries and in communities which are experiencing a serious youth unemployment shock? Because if we're talking about long-term aspiration, there really is a critical point there. I'm not quite sure how else to phrase that, but something's happening in that time period. And it does lead into some of the regs and the rules about transitions. Yes, and at that point, so if we're seeing more transactional activity on an account, then do we need to consider, is that the point at which we should consider different types of products for youth during that period that can target exactly what their aspirations are if they are looking to be entrepreneurs and that sort of thing. Scarlet, some of the accounts had to close because you got to an age limit, right? In some places weren't there? No, some of the banks have sort of the next up account and those accounts are getting transitioned automatically. And then some are frozen until the youth come back with the requirement and then they can move on to a higher account. Okay, we'll go here and then in the back there. Hi, my name is Rosena Ramirez and I'm now an independent consultant, but I worked previously with Freedom from Hunger and we work with youth in non-formal savings groups in West Africa. And one of the things that we found out is that parents of youth in savings groups often tap into both the loans and the savings of the youth. So not only are parents contributing to the savings but actually tapping into it as another financial instrument. So I am wondering if you have looked at that or if you were going to look at that in terms of are the parents, could they potentially also utilize this as another financial instrument for the household? From our view, we can't see that. But we can't really know who's making the actual withdrawal or deposit. It doesn't say parent and child. Withdrawals have to be a parent and child or a company together. I think we may see some of that in the experiment because I can ask some of those questions of the parents. They have in a parent interview as well talking about how that is working. And I think the integrative case studies may tell us a little bit more about that as well. The data that we have, from what I know anecdotally, it is possible that culturally, this count might be more for the family than just for the individual child as well. And so it might be used in that manner. But our data can't tell us that answer. And I think, I would say, that can be both a good or a bad thing, right? I mean, I think cultural in the U.S., we tend to think of that maybe as an appropriation of that. But that's not necessarily the case. However, I was talking to a woman who runs a project in rural Uganda yesterday and she was saying, well, you know, in the case of young women who are married or whose fathers have a significant amount of control if they are saving in a formal way and the father or the husband finds out that that hasn't been information that has been shared. It could expose them to gender-based violence and things like that. So it's dicey, at least. Yes, gentlemen right there. And then there's one in front, you. And then a couple, just, yeah. Thomas Bowen, I'm minister of fellowship and social justice community outreach at Shiloh Baptist Church here in Washington. Conversation has been very informative. I'm wondering about the involvement or lack of religious community faith institutions in your effort. I'm struck that when we do our baby dedication, you talked about accounts from birth. When we dedicate children at the church, we open up an account in our credit union in the name of that child with the caveat that we're gonna start it but the parents have to maintain it. But this puts more meat on the bone in terms of our need to be intentional about helping to develop the young people and impact it will have, as you've said, on education and health. But I'm wondering are there faith communities involved in any of the efforts that you've seen? Yeah, good question. And I guess just to highlighted from your question is also the different life stages that people are at. So obviously when you do something when there's a newborn or a very young child, you're engaging with the parent, generally the guardian. But obviously, was the kids get older in different places, they're at different places where they can kind of make the account their own. So anyway, that's interesting looking at the life course. I think it's great that your church is doing that. I think it's a wonderful some of the work we've been trying to do for a long time. As you said, I mean, this gets everybody involved, right? This brings the whole community into the effort of building up the assets for families and communities as a whole. Everybody benefits. I think that's wonderful. And you say, I mean, there were schools involved when the schools had faith-based or religious. Some of them did. Yes, some of the schools are Catholic schools. So all kinds of schools were involved. I think that the financial institutions market was targeting more schools, whether it was a faith-based or other kind of school or secular school. When we asked the question, we do have one of the responses is, did you learn about the account through a faith-based organization? And very few, very few mentioned that. So I don't know if that's been, but that might just be merely a function of the marketing efforts that have gone on with the financial institution. I mean, when young, when people are saying we heard about it through friends and family, we don't know where those friends and family are. I mean, they could be talking to each other at any or within any organization. I will add that the source of documentation that banks often accepted in youth save in youth start and other projects came not only from schools, but from local mosques or church spokespeople. In terms of fulfilling the identity requirements. I can just add that there are some public policy examples of this as well. I'm thinking of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's Children's Savings Accounts, which were really accounts that were set up for children through a partnership of government and financial institutions from birth. So it was one of them. No, we're at birth, Child Trust Fund accounts. Child Trust Fund, thank you. Okay, let's see, we've got only time for a few more. Let's go to you. Why don't we ask them all together? One, two, three, four. And then we'll have some. So yeah, concise, but thank you for your input. My name is Jared Penner, I'm with Child and Youth Finance International. Thank you for the wonderful presentations. I'm curious if they're, you know, looking at some of the interesting findings that have come out of the project, but if you noticed actually any of the sort of further knock-on effects either to government representatives in these countries or other financial institutions or other youth-serving organizations based on some of the interventions that you were having with the four financial institutions, did you notice any sort of a wider effect either in the community or ideally at the government level in terms of all this change? Yeah, great question. Okay, there was one up here, yeah, there you go. Monique Cohen, one of the things that strikes me about this data set is that it's really biased towards youth in school. And so the question that I think we need to address is what about the youth that aren't in school? Yes. And often the most vulnerable. I know it's a challenge, but I think it's a challenge we have to address, so I wonder if you have any idea. Yeah, good question. Okay, two more. Quickly there. Oh, there you go, one and then two. You'll be the final, okay. John Myers with Swiss Contact, just had a question or follow-up on the remark about entrepreneurs. That it's very well taken that these are often sometimes called reluctant entrepreneurs. And the other comment you made was more and more attention is being paid or seeking jobs that have a social impact. You find that in a particular region or globally or what areas more specifically. Thank you. And then finally, you can grab the mic. Thank you. Hi, we work at a very small federal agency that funds libraries and museums and we funded financial literacy project, but particularly one at New York Public Library that's been primarily funded by McGraw Hill. And we fund the development of educational materials for library practitioners that are working with the public. So I'm wondering if YouthSafe or the other projects that you're aware of have done work like that that we could tap into, those course materials. Great. Okay, excellent. So how about comments on the impact of the YouthSafe project that sounds like specifically on government or financial institutions? Lissa, what do you, or Tanaya? Tanaya might be better. Yeah. I can make one quick comment. I think we should have Rani speak on this one. She probably has the best view of... She's going to stop attending events because we just point her out. No, I know on the bank, on the financial institution side of it, by banks actually offering this product in a couple of markets. I know definitely in Nepal, there have been other competitors who have said, you know, we'll launch just basically copycat products, just the same product we'll put out in the market. But I think Rani can give us a more robust answer. Yeah, Rani, can we give you a mic? This is our project director. And you know, I mean, in one of the countries, there was another youth product in Columbia that became very much active as part of the bank's efforts and that the non-YouthSafe product got a lot more attention and uptick. So in some ways, that was one of the impacts. So, is this on? Yeah, yeah. I'll speak to the effects that we've seen at both the community and market and government levels in as much as there has been, in fact, there yet. I think that in several countries, we have seen the kinds of copycat products that were described a minute ago. And, you know, that's been flattering obviously, but our partner banks have been less than pleased at that. I think, you know, from a broader project impact perspective, however, we've been very pleased. I think that Youth Savings, though, is one of those products where it's not just the product, it's not as simple as stamping out a copycat product and putting it on the market. It's very much dependent on your ability to reach the kids. And that is not an ability that you can just copycat and stamp out. So, those copycat products have not been as successful as the ones that YouthSafe has sponsored. I think the product that you are alluding to read is an entry-level savings product that had been in the market through one of our partner banks for about 1920 years. And so it had a much bigger client base already before the YouthSafe project came in and helped this bank establish this program to recurring savings product, which is a little bit higher, you know, level of difficulty in terms of entering. And then at the policy level, in several of our countries, the project has helped to spur through meetings like this, actually, at the local level, has helped to spur a coming together of different actors interested in the broader subject of financial inclusion for youth, but also financial education for youth. And especially as connected to the youth, sort of unemployment issues that many of these countries are addressing. So, we really are seeing a lot of momentum and energy around that in the four countries that we are working in with tie-ins both to the practitioner communities and government and policy makers. And actually, while you have the mic, what about the issue of the bias to the school and the vulnerable youth? Obviously, it's something we've talked a lot about. So, you know, when we started out, our questions were, if we build it in this way, will they come and who will come? And I think it's been pretty clear that in order for us to balance or for our financial institution partners to balance the twin objectives of outreach and sustainability, the most efficient path for them to pursue has been through schools, just because you can reach far larger numbers of kids in an in-school environment than you can for out-of-school settings where kids are dispersed. And so, the marketing strategy is naturally veered towards that market segment. And I think that's been one of the lessons coming out of the project, is that if you are, if there is an imperative towards cost efficiency, that is where the marketing is going to go. And that kind of outreach mechanism may not be the most appropriate for either rural populations outside of financial institution catchment areas or out-of-school youth. I think that formal financial saving strategies can be appropriate for out-of-school youth, but they take much more intensive social intermediation and you need a broader range of players than just financial institutions, I think to adequately reach and serve them. And I would like, sorry. Just to add to that, one of the reasons for that outreach in those places also is because the bigger ante was this product was targeted to low-income youth, not just youth, but low-income youth. And so, to reach some of the low-income youth and to ensure, or not ensure, but hope to have that offer, they went into those low-income communities and neighborhoods and schools associated with that in order to be able to even begin to reach that population. So I think that was another piece to the whole process. I would also say that if you look at a lot of the health studies, you find that a lot of the vaccinations and all those things happen at schools because that's where the kids are. So it's a very logical location if you're trying to reach youth in any way. Right, but I would second what Monique said. I mean, in terms of really making an attempt to reach the most vulnerable youth, this is something that somehow needs to be corrected for. And I think the project, to some degree, has tried to do that in terms of having staff on the ground reaching out and forming partnerships with NGOs, but those are not necessarily sort of the logical partnerships that have historically been made, as so is children's villages, for example, and a bank. And so that takes a lot of time and a lot of resources. Yeah, it's certainly part of the frontier. Natalie or Ruth, and then Tanaya, you start. And then if you guys have other things you want to weigh in, they're on that. Just one comment, really. I think the out-of-school youth challenge is a very interesting one, and one we have to solve, I agree. And I think one of the, if you have to look at it from a sustainability come outreach perspective, I think what we should be looking for are natural aggregators, where, yes, out-of-school youth are not in schools, so you can't use schools as a channel, but are there natural places where they are aggregating? And just your comments, Natalie, make me think if there are vocational training institutions, their skills development, are there places that out-of-school youth are actually coming together? And then again, back to the faith-based comment, if they're not in school, but they're coming to church, or they're going to their local mosques. So really thinking about aggregation points versus just schools, which is one aggregation point, but as an avenue to explore. And can I just add, from policy perspective, and scalability and sustainability, to me it seems in the ideal world, every child gets an account at birth, and then you're not worrying about the access piece. Instead, you can put your focus on the usage in the building up of assets. So reaching out-of-school youth, reaching young people who have disabilities of some kind, all of these, it's much more easy to reach the universal population. And then we don't have to be focusing energy as much on how do you get the account open, as much as just, okay, now how can we get this account built up over time? And I think it would be nice, the programs, everything that works toward that can be focused in those areas, as opposed to, oh my gosh, how do I just get the account open? I think if we could just get that one piece solved, it would be pretty easy, and then we can move on to the other piece. I'm gonna just very quickly, she has a plane to catch. I'm really sorry, sir, I am going to head out, but I will leave a couple of my business cards outside. Do email me with any questions, apologies, I have an event in the afternoon. And we are over time, but let's, a few final words. Did you have anything, Ruth? Sure, I think the last comments on scale were interesting. I have, in the last few years, managed four partnerships in youth financial services. And if we look at the total sum outreach, we will see outliers that there are two or three providers who have kind of taken the 80% of those accounts. And if you look at those providers, they are the ones who have the institutional muscle in those markets. They have 3,000 access points throughout the country. I think one of the most successful youth serving organization partnerships that Maria looks after works with a youth organization that also has national coverage and high government kind of enabling facilities. So this has all been great, and I think all of it contributes to that body of knowledge. But clearly there are, we're going to see in the coming year and a half as we reflect on all of this work and some of the market demonstration studies and effects of what we're doing here, we're gonna see some interesting ideas for the way forward. All right, so we didn't get to everything, but we got to a lot. And I wanna thank you all for being here today. I'll also say that a lot of the information, the research, other perspectives, previous work is available on the web, the youth save website, easy to find, and we'll continue to be producing interesting material in the next and the months to come. So thank you all for coming up here today. Thank you for joining us, and good afternoon. Thank you.