At noon, a ten-year-old boy ran into the library with a greasy paper bag in his hand, took out a red savings book and said to the teacher, "I want to get 2 yuan money!" "
The teacher looked at him and said, "Only 2 yuan money is left in your passbook. You have to take your passbook. "
The little boy thought for a moment and said, "then I'll take 1 yuan ... no, I want 1 yuan.50"
The teacher added a new account to the savings book and copied it on the numerous account books.
Zhufang Village, Qinghe Town, Haidian District, Beijing is a typical floating population settlement. In this community's New Century Dream Library, a "Afutong Children's Bank" has been established for floating children. More than 40 primary school students from nearby schools have set up their own savings books here to manage their pocket money, which can be accessed free of charge.
Children learn to manage their own pocket money, then learn to manage their own desires and manage themselves, and intervene in civic education from the cultivation of financial management and life skills. Baxter Education, a non-profit organization, tries to educate the teenagers here about finance and business.
Worrying pocket money
After 12: 00, groups of primary school students flowed to roadside stalls and snack bars in all corners of Zhufang Village. Sesame cakes and kebabs are most children's lunches. In the school for migrant children, most parents are too busy to take care of their children. In addition to sending children to school, breakfast and lunch are generally eaten by children themselves, and children's pocket money ranges from several yuan to dozens of yuan a day.
Wang Yi, the librarian of the new century, witnessed the current situation of many children's indiscriminate consumption. "Children of migrant families often eat in junk food stores after school, or buy unnecessary simple and fragile toys, and even many children steal their parents' money on their birthdays." He even cracked the "case" of children stealing money. A pair of parents who sell vegetables for a living, for a period of time, the accounts of vegetables are always inconsistent, and they are all missing 500 or 100 bills. Wang Yi asked his children's classmates, only to find that his family's meals were packed in a box, and the children treated them with one or two bills.
Wang Yi found that most children have no idea about their pocket money. They usually spend as much as they have. When they are short of money, they will reach out and ask their parents for money. Their parents are busy at work and have no sense of financial management at ordinary times. Teenagers' financial management education is difficult to complete in family education and does not belong to the school education system.
20 10 A survey released by the Youth Research Institute of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences shows that Chinese parents like to reward their children with materials, and the rate of giving their children pocket money is much higher than that of the United States, Japan and South Korea. Where did the pocket money go? The survey found that snacks, toys and stationery are the final destination of most pocket money.
Wang Sheng worked in an internet company in Singapore and was studying for a postdoctoral degree in philosophy of education. In 2009, he founded Baxter Education Consulting Center, a non-profit organization aimed at providing financial and business education for young people. "China has long lacked financial and business education, and its social demand potential is huge; There are few non-profit organizations in this field and the competition is limited. " Through the cooperation with the International Children's Savings Fund, Baxter Education has launched a social financial and business education course for children with "Fufutong", and provided life-oriented social financial and business education courses for schools and communities through volunteer networks and Internet platforms.
In 20 12, Sheng Wang found a new century library in Beijing to serve the children of migrant workers, and decided to invest in promoting the Afutong Bank project in the new century library. Wang Yi, the curator, also participated in the five-day training for Afutong children.
Afutong's wish
The Afutong project of the New Century Library was officially launched in September of that year. At first, with the consent of the school, Wang Yi held a weekly study class for the children of migrant workers near the library. The course adopts participatory teaching method, focusing on social life skills and basic financial life skills.
"Financial management is actually learning to manage desires, learning to distinguish what you want from what you need, and children's ability to manage themselves will be improved. The third and fourth grades of primary school are the best stage of financial management class. "
20 13 1 At the beginning of the year, the red savings book with the cartoon image of Ah Fu Tong began to spread among children. The savings book is the same size as the passbook, with a fine grid of loan details, and "Afutong Project of the Dream Library in the New Century" is printed on the back.
Banks also have to pay interest, because at present, children's accounts are relatively small and frequent, so the library stipulates that interest can only be calculated if the deposit period exceeds 100 yuan. If it is less than 100 yuan and the interest is less than 0. 1 yuan, give the child a dime symbolically, or give a pen or an eraser as a reward.
With savings, children made their own savings wish: a little boy hopes to save enough money to buy a computer; Another boy hopes to save enough money to buy a bottle of flour oil on his mother's birthday; A little girl said that she wanted to save pocket money and donate it to the library. ...
Afutong encourages children to develop the habit of keeping accounts. When the child takes the passbook to withdraw money, the administrator will ask the child the purpose. If it is not necessary, they will persuade their children to think twice.
In order to let children learn to consume reasonably, Wang Yi found a shopping guide color page in the supermarket, and asked the children to circle what they wanted and needed. He made an analogy, "for example, cakes and rice, rice is necessary and cakes are desirable."
Around the concept of saving, Wang Yi told the children the concepts of "saving time" and "saving love", taught them to make activity plans and study plans, and learned to manage themselves in the process of repeated training.
Afutong Bank in the library has gradually become popular, and some children have begun to realize their small wishes through savings. What impressed Wang Yi the most was Yang Nini, a sixth-grade girl. For several months in a row, little girls came to the bank to deposit money, usually in small amounts of one yuan and two yuan. On a sultry afternoon in July, the little girl suddenly came to Wang Yi and said that she would go back to her hometown to attend junior high school next semester, and asked to donate all the money she had saved to the library.
"ah fu tong Guan
There are 60 yuan on the books, which is not a small sum for a pupil. Wang Yi repeatedly confirmed to her that she had donated all of them? Do parents know? The little girl said disapprovingly that she thought about it when she saved the first money, and her parents didn't interfere with her. She hopes that the library will become bigger and bigger, so that more children can have books to read.
This summer, children saw a mountain of outdated old books outside the library and came up with the idea of selling books to raise money. Apart from telling the children how to deal with the doubts of the urban management and parents, Wang Yi did not participate in the charity sale process, but the children made their own decisions and completed them through the team. 12 children were divided into three groups, and some groups explored a set of sales skills in the process of charity sale, with small profits but quick turnover, buy one and get one free, and sell together. The charity sale lasted for a week, two hours a day, and the children raised a total of 240 yuan.
Difficult operation
When the thin-cover exercise book was reformed, every child's account was numbered, but most children's deposits were only one or two yuan, with the maximum not exceeding 100 yuan. In the frequently visited books, a few children keep the habit of time deposit. The administrator told the reporter that from books, the deposit habits of children in public primary schools are obviously better than those of children in migrant workers' schools, and most of them are related to their parents' family education. However, in any case, these children with savings books will still have better consumption habits than those who have not participated in bank projects.
But reality is often more complicated than ideal. The education system is a huge system, and change is a very difficult thing.
After studying in a nearby school for children of migrant workers for a semester, Wang Yi's Afutong course was kicked out of the school. Every time I have a class with Afutong children, the children are very excited. This kind of excitement often lasts until the next class, and classroom discipline is difficult to maintain for a while. Teachers are dissatisfied with this. Not only that, Afutong's children's weekly classes also "delayed" many regular classes, and the school has repeatedly hinted that Wang Yi needs to provide some sponsorship to the school if he wants to start classes in the school.
Regarding the achievements of this project, Wang Yi said that he just intuitively thought that the children who had attended the course were more confident and optimistic than before, and many children who had not attended the course also came to the library to set up a savings book, and there was no evaluation link for the project. Apart from five days' training in Afutong's course, his understanding of Afutong's concept mostly comes from the plate exchanges in online forums. Although the course has stopped, but with word of mouth, Afutong Bank still stays in the library, and children come to deposit and withdraw money from time to time.
Migrant children are a very unstable group. Opening the first few pages of the ledger, the librarian chanted that several children had not come for several months, fearing that some would go back to their hometown to study.
Trouble keeps coming. From June 5438+ 10 this year, Baxter Education suddenly stopped funding the courses of Afutong children. Wang Yi explained that due to the rapid expansion of the Afutong project in China, Baxter's board of directors wanted to remove some project sites, and New Century was also on the list of sites to be removed. However, the full-time staff of the project has been filled, so Wang Yi can only crustily skin of head and continue to maintain the project.
Sheng Wang's explanation for the suspension of funding is that as a grassroots NGO, the financial management ability of the New Century Library is too poor to issue invoices and receipts on time as agreed, which brings great trouble to the financial affairs of the sponsors. After several communications between the two parties, Baxter decided to continue to fund the project operation in the new century, but the funds were reduced by half compared with before-only 2500 yuan was paid, and personal accounts were directly paid instead.
The New Century Library was first established in 2005, and was originally attached to the school library of the New Century School for Migrant Workers' Children. In 2006, the New Century School was demolished and the library was forced to move to Zhufang Village, thus becoming a public welfare community library. The annual budget expenditure of the library is about130,000 yuan, but the funds raised in 2065.438+03 are only 30,000 yuan, which means that not only Wang Yi himself, but also two other staff members are still owed a salary of 2,000 yuan a month.
However, Wang Yi said that even without subsidies, he would continue to operate Afutong's project, and the only way to maintain it was to rob Peter to pay Paul. 10 On June 6th, a small blackboard was erected under the signboard of the library, which had been tanned by the sun. It read: "Good news, Afutong Bank Savings Office, which opened on June 6th18th, could have only received gifts for three days."
Gifts are pencils and erasers, and the children gather together one by one.