Youth and Financial Services Working Group
PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
The MasterCard Foundation
http://mastercardfdn.org/
The MasterCard Foundation advances microfinance and youth learning to promote financial inclusion and prosperity. Through collaboration with committed partners in 48 countries, The MasterCard Foundation is helping people living in poverty to access opportunities to learn and prosper. An independent, private foundation based in Toronto, Canada, it was established through the generosity of MasterCard Worldwide at the time of the company’s initial public offering in 2006.
Youth and Financial Services Working Group
SEEP recognizes the variety of themes and challenges that working in the microfinance and microenterprise development industry entails. In this working group, we engage practitioners and share our experiences with the goal of identifying the successes, challenges and trends in offering financial and non-financial services for youth. The group focuses specifically on access usage and sustainability of the products and services.
For the purposes of this working group, we will use the United Nations definition of youth which states that youth are “those persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years.” As a group, we understand that youth is not solely defined by age, but also by life stage and that, more broadly-speaking, youth may include individuals or groups outside of the 15 – 24 bracket. Further, youth within the bracket may be further disaggregated to reflect the nuances such as gender, urban/rural split, employment status, marriage status, education level and/or life stage. The working group acknowledges that youth are not a homogenous group and that the definition we are using is functional and widely accepted.
If you are interested in learning more about the Youth and Financial Services Working Group, or joining the group, please contact Nisha Singh.
Member Spotlight
Jennifer Gurbin Harley, Project Leader, Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA)
Ms. Jennifer Gurbin Harley is a microfinance practitioner with five years of experience in youth-focused programming and qualitative research methodologies, including market research as well as monitoring and evaluation. She currently works as a Project Leader with the Youth and Financial Services Department at Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) where she manages long-term projects, supports business development activities and delivers short-term consulting services in the areas of youth and financial services programming.
Meeting
Youth and Financial Services Working Group Meeting on May 7th in Instanbul, Turkey
The Youth and Financial Services Working Group will be hosting a join session with eMFP Youth Action Group Meeting on Tuesday, May 7th as a part of the Pre-summit events at the Child and Youth Finance International Summit in Istanbul, Turkey. The meeting will showcase the Y&FS WG's recent publication Understanding Youth and their Financial Needs. In addition the meeting will allow for the two groups to explore alignment of next steps and opportunities for collaboration.
