February 27, 2017 By Victoria Naomi Saffa
The Movement for Public Accountability and Development (MoPAD), has organised one day training for seven district facilitators on financial literacy in the northern provincial headquarter town of Makeni.
The training was part of capacity building for district facilitators.
In his opening remarks, the Board Chairman, Abdulrahman Morlson Sesay, said the project was borne out of the 2017 National Strategy of the Bank of Sierra Leone on financial inclusion.
According to him, the strategy was designed by the bank to enhance inclusion of every Sierra Leonean in the financial sector and financial operations in the country.
“In Sierra Leone, most of the people don’t operate bank accounts especially people in the private sector and this is not good for the country. People continue to keep their moneys at home even when we now have banks and other financial institutions operating in the country, coupled with micro financial institution and mobile money companies which are safe and guarantee,” he said.
The board chairman informed participants that the project will be targeting the fourteen political districts in the country, but that MoPAD will only be responsible for seven districts including the Western Area Rural, Port Loko, Kambia, Bombali, Tonkolili, Koinadugu and Bo district respectively.
He said they would also be reaching out to two secondary schools in each of the targeted district.
He said the project would focus on introducing the concept of financial literacy to school children in the targeted schools, thereby supporting them to identify one development initiative for which they will save for and execute within the project period.
“Participants of this training are expected to serve as district facilitators in the project that the BSL has approve a total of Fifty Million Leones for the two partners and Twenty Five Million Leones (Le 25,000,000),” he said.
The national coordinator, Fatmata Olive Scale, thanks the facilitators for honouring MoPAD invitation and called for their continued cooperation during the intervention.
She also expressed appreciation to the BSL for the support and partnership towards building the capacity of young people and children on financial literacy, which according to her is very important for the economic development of every nation.
She concluded that facilitators will be responsible to supporting MoPAD and the respective schools to achieve their objective.
The training covered topics including the basic concept of financial inclusion & literacy, the importance of savings, financial institution and their operations in Sierra Leone, and the mandate of the BSL.
Fatmata Charm, the facilitator from Kambia, expressed appreciation on behalf of the participants and said that the training was relevant and timely more so, when they were faced with financial austerity in the country.
“If people and our children begin to save for the future, most of our problems will have financial solutions,” she concluded.
The Movement for Public Accountability and Development (MoPAD) is a civil society organisation working on public financial management, public accountability and financial transparency.