PINOY WISE (Worldwide Initiative for Savings Investment and Entrepreneurship) (Philippines)

First, financial literacy education is more than training in economics and book keeping. As a social exercise, the design of successful training exercises needs to involve financial and banking experts but also sociologists, psychologists, and social workers. Unlike other financial literacy trainings that are much shorter and focus only on core financial aspects, Athika’s trainings are 15-20 hours of net training time and follow a more holistic approach.

Second, Athika found that a major cause for the lack of migrants’ savings is that families back home are draining their resources. For this reason, financial literacy training could not have any significant impact without addressing family issues. Thus, in Athika’s training modules a full day is dedicated to group sharing and discussion on why individuals and families are not able to save. These discussions are reported to be life-changing for many participants and with the insights gained, during the training programme, participants design ‘dream maps’, in which they lay out their goals for the next five years, not in terms of how much they want to save but what they want to do with the money and subsequently, how they can achieve this goal financially.

Third, it was found that trained migrants and their families are willing to save and invest but do not know where to put their money. It was concluded that financial training is more efficient when they are linked to concrete financial products that aim to promote investment in migrants’ provinces of origin. To this end, PinoyWISE has gone through many processes of clearing investment possibilities for Filipinos overseas, as will be discussed more in detail in the section on development effects below.

Fourth, within Athika’s IFAD-funded project on channeling remittances into agribusinesses, it was found that in addition to the training and offering certain investment packages, ongoing mentoring was needed. To this end, Athika created a closed-group on the social networking website Facebook which was used to connect those who had undergone training and to offer ongoing mentoring beyond the classes. In addition, Athika is in the process of designing a follow-up course and a ‘workbook’ to monitor progress. All participants of Pinoy WISE financial education are invited to become members of the PinoyWISE Overseas Filipino and Family Circles (OFCs) of their municipalities.

Other innovative elements include that PinoyWISE operates an internet website, where investors can log in and receive instant information on the amount saved and the interest accumulated. This adds to the transparency of the initiative.

In 2012, PinoyWISE became a network of national and local governments, government financial institutions, agriculture-based cooperatives, rural banks, microfinance institutions as well as of NGOs that are involved in financial education, investment mobilization and trade and tourism promotion for migrants and families. This network includes Atikha, the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Association (OWWA), Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP), Department of Agriculture, Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), chambers of commerce, as well as several local government units, especially provinces.