SaveAct’s financial education tools are being drawn upon in the development of material for a study involving 540 adolescents in three countries, South Africa, Nepal and Colombia. The project, called “Alive”, is developing and testing interventions for improving mental health in adolescents in low-income countries.
The research-based project is being led by King’s College London, with several international universities involved, including the University of Cape Town (UCT). The project will take five years to complete, although the implementation side will only run for six months, from May to December 2024. Wellcome Trust is funding the study.
The tools, which include learning maps and other illustrative and participative materials, have been adapted to the various local contexts, using SaveAct’s technique for teaching savings group members how to manage their money. Under SaveAct’s umbrella, the tools were developed by Chloe Jacquin, who has a background in financial education, financial wellness and entrepreneurship. Ms Jacquin has recently been involved in another pilot with SaveAct and the Duzi-Mngeni Conservation Trust, also focusing on youth.
Ms Jacquin says the point of the Alive project is to see how mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, can be prevented for adolescents in low-income countries. “It’s a topic that is not well researched,” she says. “The idea is to try out different approaches to see what works best.” These approaches will be tested in three interventions, run in parallel in the three countries.
In the first group, participants are receiving a self-regulation intervention to develop self-awareness, work towards a healthy future and build a supportive group of peers in sports activities. In South Africa, the intervention is centred around surfing, implemented by Waves for Change, an NGO based in Muizenberg that teaches youth from vulnerable communities how to surf. This experience also enables them to learn how to regulate their emotions and feelings. Waves for Change is overseeing the development of the self-regulation intervention in the three countries.
The second group is being provided with economic interventions with a focus on three key topics: financial skills, negotiation and information about education. Ms Jacquin, under SaveAct’s umbrella, developed with King’s College of London a six-month intervention of 20 sessions that enables adolescents to start thinking about their financial goals. The sessions also cover spending behaviour and the importance of parental decisions and education.
The third group’s intervention involves a combination of the other two. It tests whether economic content when integrated into self-regulation activities has a greater impact in reducing depression and anxiety among adolescents in lower-income countries. To find out which intervention is the most effective, a control group is not receiving anything. Each intervention includes six sessions of counselling for the adolescents’ parents and/ or caregivers. SaveAct’s curriculum was very instrumental in putting together the economic intervention for parents and caregivers.
The interventions will happen in randomly selected schools. All participants (adolescents as well as parents and/ or caregivers) are also receiving a stipend each month to support further education.
“The hypothesis is that the third (combined) intervention will have the most impact on reducing mental health issues amongst adolescents in low-income countries,” says Ms Jacquin.
SaveAct has a content-developing role in the project. It provided its FE content which has been adapted to fit the needs of Alive, e.g. four new curricula and three new learning maps have been developed for the different countries. Although saving is encouraged in the groups it is not a feature in the interventions, because the period of the them is short in duration.
“This is a really important study for low-income countries because mental health for adolescents has not been well researched. Linking it with economic content is very innovative,” says Ms Jacquin. “That can open so much work that is meaningful for adolescents in terms of them finding their feet in society. Also, we are working on youth-focused work for SaveAct, and this study informed what we are doing.”