When Ahmad Start to Saving in School Saving

Ahmad (11 years old) is one of Wahana Visi Indonesia (WVI) registered children. He has been involved in WVI activity since 2012 when he was in the Kindergarten. Now Ahmad is in 4th grade and grows as a seashore child.

His father is a fisherman and his mother, Nursince, is a cadre of the children in the village.  His father works in other villages far from Ahmad and his four siblings.

Ahmad goes to school every day and gets an allowance from his mother. He will divide his allowance into two parts. One for snacks expense and another for school saving. Ahmad’s school collaborates with a province bank to increase the saving habits for students.

If his mother gave him IDR 10,000, he would save IDR 7,000. He addicted to saving his allowance since his mother let him save money in the school.

Ahmad has spent 2 years in 1st grade. In the first year, he could not move to the next grade because he hard to learn the letter.

When he was in the 1st grade for the second year, he finally could read. At that time, after his mother got ASCA socialization from WVI staff and also seeing how success their neighbour’s children in school saving, his mother introduced him about saving.

“I never do saving before. When I got money from my husband, it would end up without reason. I don’t know how to save since WVI came and introduced ASCA and PERT. Know I know how to save our income and money,” said Nursince.

According to her, PERT helps her and her family understand about saving money for about 10 per cent of income before taking out for household needs expense.

Nursince said Ahmad also knows about the saving rules. So that he already has his own saving at school.

“I teach him to save money and he is really proud of it. When staff of WVI asked about who has saving at home or school, it encouraged him to save his allowance. He could buy his needs using his own money. He also helped us to cover up household needs by using his saving.

“I thank  WVI to giving acquaintance about ASCA and PERT. We are grateful to know all the knowledge,” said her at the end of the conversation with WVI staff.

Written by: Nila Pratiwi, Field Facilitatorof Wahana Visi Indonesia Area Program Touna