 Inspired
by Butterflies initiatives-a Saving Scheme and a Credit
Union for the economic empowerment of street and working
children, Children's Development Bank is a natural
development and evolution of these two programs
- The issue for most
street and working children is:
-Lack of productive use of Earnings
-most street and working children spend all
their earnings by the end of the day
-lose money kept in custody with their
employer or known adult
-do not use money productively (spend on
cinema, gambling, cigarettes etc.)
- Need to secure future
- lack of knowledge about viable enterprise
and setting it up
- Need to build on life
skills
- Leadership
- cognitive and perceptive skills
A response to their
needs:
The Children's Development Bank (Bal Vikas Bank):
From credit union to Bank
Children's Development Bank (Bal Vikas Bank) is a
natural development and evolution of our saving and
credit union scheme. This bank works on banking and
co-operative principles. Any child can save money with
the bank and earn an interest as well as loans are given
to any bank member who is 15 years and above for small
economic enterprises. The bank is managed by children
and adults only play the role of facilitators. The
children have an elected management committee of eleven
and three office bearers - President, Secretary and
Treasurer. This committee drafts rules and regulations
for smooth functioning of their bank. The National
Foundation for India, an Indian funding agency, gave the
initial seed money to start the bank. As of September
30th 2004 CDB has 1026 members.
How did it begin :
In April 2001, the National Foundation for India invited
four NGOs based in Delhi to initiate a youth bank as a
pilot project based on Youth Bank already operating in
the UK facilitated by CIVA with funds from the Ford
Foundation. Butterflies children had been running their
own credit union since July 1995 and wanted to run their
bank differently. They wanted it to be a children's bank
and to run it as a co-operative. They wanted to save,
earn interest and be able to take a loan at nominal
interest. The loan interest was to be an earning for the
bank to be shared by its members. The bank was formally
launched, in partnership with NFI and support from the
Ford Foundation, in April 2001.
It started in April 2001
to allow children to deposit and withdraw money enabling
children to save money for the future. The child can:
- Put money aside for
themselves without worry that it will be lost or
stolen
- Save for things that
they need or want, such as clothes
- Plan to improve
themselves, by saving for education and training
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