Below is a recent news release from Freedom From Hunger, an international development organization that brings innovative and sustainable self-help solutions to combat chronic hunger and poverty.
Davis, California: Freedom from Hunger announces the release of its financial education module, Consumer Protection: Balancing Rights and Responsibilities, the latest addition to a growing library of modules developed in collaboration with Microfinance Opportunities with support from Citi Foundation.
Considering today’s climate of economic uncertainty and concerns about predatory lending to and profiting from the poor, there is a movement to provide microfinance clients with financial education. Now available from Freedom from Hunger and Microfinance Opportunities, Consumer Protection: Balancing Rights and Responsibilities is a module in the financial curricula to train microfinance institution clients and the staff who guide them to empower consumers to ask questions and seek the information they need to fully understand the products they choose and the contracts they sign.
In 2003, Freedom from Hunger and Microfinance Opportunities foresaw the need for consumer education and protection and began to develop a core financial education curricula with the focus on micro-entrepreneurs and clients of microfinance programs in developing countries. One of the first of its kind to be used in the developing world, this curricula can help build basic financial literacy for those who want and need to learn how to manage their money and use financial services effectively.
Consumer Protection is a resource for existing and potential customers of all financial institutions, from microfinance institutions to formal banks, as well as for corporate and governmental stakeholders engaged in the emerging global movement for consumer protection.
It provides a menu of key messages and training activities that can be used to help low-income populations exercise their rights and responsibilities when using formal financial services. The learning sessions address such topics as consumers’ rights and responsibilities, their rights to privacy, ways to calculate interest rates, and what to ask before signing a contract, while guiding consumers through some basic technical information that will help them evaluate and compare products and their costs.
To download the free PDF of Consumer Protection: Balancing Rights and Responsibilities, visit Freedom from Hunger at http://www.freedomfromhunger.org/press/.
Freedom from Hunger is an international development organization that brings innovative and sustainable self-help solutions to combat chronic hunger and poverty. Freedom from Hunger trains and collaborates with 112 local partner organizations to provide value-added microfinance to groups of women. This leverage through collaboration allows our staff of fewer than 50 professionals to offer our programs to more than 2.4 million women in 17 developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. www.freedomfromhunger.org
Microfinance Opportunities (MFO) is a micro-enterprise resource center that promotes client-led microfinance. MFO seeks to equip the poor with financial capabilities to manage their money and provides research to shape financial products to suit their needs. MFO is the market leader in financial education for the world’s poor, reaching nearly 20 million low-income households through curriculum and mass media channels. www.microfinanceopportunities.org.
