The UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and The MasterCard Foundation today released a series of Trainers’ guides aimed at helping FSPs understand key issues, train staff and launch youth-oriented services.

Intervening at the closing ceremony of the second Child and Youth Finance International (CYFI) Summit in Istanbul, Marc Bichler, Executive Secretary of UNCDF, reminded that “traditionally many financial service providers have neglected youth”. “To help financial services providers design and deliver appropriate financial services for youth, policymakers should prioritize building their capacity and donors should support these efforts”.

One of the key target outcomes of YouthStart is to strengthen the capacity of FSPs participating in the programme so that they are better equipped to serve the youth market. To this end, UNCDF-YouthStart delivers one annual training to address key technical assistance needs of the FSPs. For the benefit of other FSPs and organizations interested in targeting youth, UNCDF-YouthStart and The MasterCard Foundation decided to compile and publish this series of Trainer’s guides. The goal is to facilitate the replication of the trainings in other FSPs interested in serving youth.

As of July 2013, this series of Trainer’s guides comprised four modules, each covering an essential aspect of providing financial and non-financial services to youth.

Each module is relevant at a specific step of the product development process, as follows:

Start up phase:

• Module I on Youth development programming;
• Module II on Pilot testing youth financial services
• Module III on Integration of youth financial and non-financial services.

Pilot test phase:

• Module IV on Client protection of youth clients.

This series of Trainers’ guides was possible thanks to the work of Reach Global, the Population Council, MicroSave and The Smart Campaign. They developed the modules or provided the input materials to develop them. The series was also possible thanks to all the YouthStart partners that helped us to pilot test the modules and provided feedback for their improvement.

The whole series of Trainers’ guides can be downloaded at: YouthStart Publications