Georgetown alumnus Aakash Jayaprakash interviewing families in Sri Lanka.
DOHA: One of the largest Swiss-based NGOs will use a financial literacy curriculum for migrant workers designed by the Georgetown University –Qatar, would be used by an international NGO to train pre-migrants and migrant families left behind.
The Undergraduate Research Experience Programme (UREP) project, awarded in 2010 by the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF), found that migrant workers can learn to save more money after attending a short financial literacy workshop.
The study focused on married, male Indian migrant workers in Doha and their wives who remained back in India.
Assistant Professor Ganesh Seshan was the Georgetown faculty mentor for the six students who worked together to implement a control trial of the migrant workers.
The UREP team randomly assigned migrant study participants to either a treatment group that had the choice of attending a financial literacy workshop, or to a control group that was not invited to attend.
Georgetown alumnus Aakash Jayaprakash was extremely happy to see the culmination of their work when he recently learned that one of the largest Swiss-based NGOs would be using the curriculum that he and his UPREP team designed.
“Our hard work is making a real difference in the region,” he said. The recent study found that a savings-focused workshop substantially changed migrant workers’ financial practices. It also led to more joint financial decision-making between migrants and wives.
“This is one of the most practical and field-oriented training modules on financial literacy I have seen,” said Katrin Rosenberg, project manager at HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation in Sri Lanka.
“This module, together with other modules, will serve as a basis for the development of our specific training tool on budgeting and saving.” Rosenberg expects that the curriculum can also be adapted for use and contribute to the creation of training material for use with migrants from Nepal, as well.
Committed to making migration safer for workers, HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation is a non-profit organisation that promotes self-reliant and sustainable development in 30 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It has been active in Sri Lanka for over 30 years.
The Peninsula
