We talked about how to make money. We started in a global way by having paid work through education. Here we have encouraged children to focus on studying, having a dream and working hard to achieve it. Then we exchanged on what the kids are doing right now to make some money. We noticed that many in this class are farmers’ children. Often, they accompany the parents in the fields and take advantage of picking fruits, mushrooms and very often harvest the peanut. These items are then sold to allow them to have small amounts of money to buy sweets, cookies and others.
Finally, we talked about savings. To our surprise, 16 students have some pots, others a small box or a bottle in which they put their savings.
The 16 shared their experiences and encouraged others to do the same. In sharing her experience, Sarah stressed: “Every time I get 100 CFA francs, I use 50F and I put 50F in my bottle”. This sentence became at the end of the activity, a motto for all students and their teacher: “Whenever I will have the money, I will use a little and I will keep a little”.
At the end of the session, all students made a commitment to start saving today. To encourage them, we supported the breakfast of all students to allow them to start their savings with what they planned to use to buy breakfast.
The children have finally promised to share this information with parents so everyone benefits from this information.
Given the success of the activity, we plan to continue in other schools to allow a large number of students to master these different concepts.
