The Koin Dream Challenge is an initiative of I Profile Foundation Uganda that is geared toward achieving our vision of having financially literate adults in Uganda and over time in Africa. It came to the attention of the founders that there was a poor if not non-existent saving culture among the adults in the country and on digging a little further, they realised that the problem stemmed right from childhood. Parents were failing to teach their children appropriate money handling mechanisms and even the few who were trying were not doing a very good job of it at times. It is with this in mind that the idea of the Koin Dream Challenge was birthed.
The concept of the name came from the word “coin.” In many societies parents offered children coins to reward them for a job well done or as monetary gifts and tokens. Given that the program was specially designed for children, the “c” was taken out and to make it a little more playful and also something the children could easily relate to, a “k” was put in its place.
The challenge was put in place to give children the basics of saving and add a twist to the culture by encouraging a little healthy competition. It is characterised by ninety days of saving for the participants. At the end of the ninety days, the highest savers get a boost on their savings in form of prizes. The challenge is broken down into phases, that is to say, activation, lessons and saving. During activations, the ground rules for participation are laid down to the participants and they are given a brief. After this they are taken through interactive lessons that are carefully prepared to enable they learn more about financial management at their own levels of understanding without necessarily boring them with the feel of a classroom. Our trainers are carefully selected and chosen to ensure that they can put across the required message and get the children to grasp the concept. Once this is complete and they have gone through the lessons, they are given saving boxes and their saving journey is flagged off.
The children are given a set number of days to save as much as they can. This is in a bid to teach them money discipline and also to ensure that at the end of the day, the children are able to act rationally even without close supervision. This is to inculcate the habit of saving in them.
After the stipulated time for saving elapses, a finale is held, usually on World Saving Day, 31st October. During this finale, the children get to interact with other savers from other schools and also other trainers. A set of activities is organized to give the children a quick and more fun recap of the theoretical lessons they had previously and also check to be sure that the lessons have been learnt. On completion, the boxes are opened and the children’s money is counted and accounts are opened. This came up as a result of the dismal statistics with regards to the number of people in the country that own and use bank accounts. At the Foundation, we believe that lessons learnt by children at early ages influence their habits as adults. So giving children the chance to open up bank accounts helps them learn and get used to operating bank accounts and makes it even easier for them to adapt to the habit even in adulthood.
Since the inception of I Profile Foundation Uganda, we have held three successful editions of the Koin Dream Challenge and over the years, the number of participants has grown. For the first edition (2016), we had five participating schools with over fifty participants. The second edition (2017) was bigger, attracting over three hundred twenty one students from 11 primary schools. The most recent edition (2018) was conducted at the International School Of Modelling, Kampala. For the previous participants, several check-ins were made to ensure that the existent saving clubs and communities that were birthed as a result of the Koin Dream Challenge were up and running. This year’s edition (2019) is targeting over 20 schools and a very large number of participants.
The trainers added a twist to the program by encouraging the participants to earn extra money on top of their savings from upkeep. This gave birth to the Kidpreneur program which encourages children to learn a few practical skills with which they can boost their savings. All this is done with the consent and supervision of teachers and parents. The children, however, are encouraged to prioritise their education and take on the activities as a separate pastime.
Be Part Of The Project Or View More Photos
If you want to be part of the Koin Dream Challenge, please contact us. You can also
view the full album of photos from the challenge on Facebook.