WWF joins ANZ, UNDP in rural communities

Dionisia Tabureguci
When the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) launched its now popular mobile rural banking service in Fiji in October 2004, it came with what the bank considered was an important complementary service¬—the provision of a financial literacy service.

The bank’s partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)— which provided financial literacy service—achieved modest success in such a short time that it attracted worldwide interest. 

By mid-2006, the ANZ-UNDP partnership managed to begin different stages of the project in Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, American Samoa, Papua New Guinea and Kiribati and banked around 60,000 rural dwellers and mobilised some F$5 million, according to Carolyn Blacklock, ANZ’s head of rural banking in the Pacific.

But what is perhaps a lesser-publicised aspect of this project is the accompanying financial literacy programme which has been as effective as the provision of banking services to rural dwellers.

In a region where an estimated 6 million people out of its 8 million inhabitants do not have access to decent financial services yet own an abundance of natural resources, it could be said that the need for financial literacy may have been under-emphasised. 

At the launch of the UNDP-ANZ partnership, which has come to be known as the UNDP-ANZ Partnership for Banking the Unbanked in the Pacific, UNDP’s Pacific Regional Sustainable Livelihood specialist Jeff Liew likened the provision of a rural banking service without a financial literacy component as being similar to “giving books to people without teaching them how to read.

“The way people use their money has significant impact on the economy,” Liew later wrote in a paper titled: Banking the Unbanked in Fiji: The ANZ Bank and UNDP Partnership Model. A healthy economy is made up of knowledgeable consumers. When many people make wise decisions on spending, savings and investment, the economy is strengthened.

“Financial education also leads to increased productivity and can influence a switch from conspicuous consumption to productive investment. Decisions consumers make also shape the services and products available to them. 

“Financial education is particularly important to those who have less to manage. The recently published regional MDG report for the Pacific, reported that available evidence clearly points to an increasing incidence of poverty in some Pacific Islands Countries with the problem being much more widespread than generally thought. At least 12 percent of households in 12 of the 13 Pacific Islands countries (PICs) studied suffer from basic needs poverty.

In most disadvantaged PICs, the proportion is estimated to exceed 33 percent. Although hunger is less prevalent, malnutrition is present with the proportion of underweight children reaching 27 percent. 

“Financial insecurity is not only a factor of inadequate income but, often, it is exacerbated by poor money management.”

The problem of poor management is manifested in many ways in the Pacific, many of which have translated to waste, poverty, depletion and degradation of available resources at individual as well as national level.   

Aside from UNDP/ANZ and the various forms of micro-finance schemes implemented in the Pacific, another community partner that has recognised the need to provide financial literacy service as key to achieving its desired goal is WWF Fiji. Last October, it launched what it called its Financial Literacy Education Training (FLET) for Fiji designed to help in the overall conservation of natural resources.

WWF offered FLET to communities in the districts of Mali, Dreketi, Sasa and Macuata in Vanua Levu. The offering included “a two-week hands-on exercise on budgeting and management of finances to save for the short-term.”

Funded by Vodafone ATH Fiji Foundation and a joint partnership between WWF and the National Centre for Small and Micro-Enterprise Development (NSCMED), FLET is meant to help villages in these communities preserve and use their natural resources in a more sustainable way.

WWF’s intention is not far removed from the aim of the UNDP/ANZ partnership in that it seeks to promote better management of resources in the hands of ordinary Pacific islanders, whether it is money, land or sea resources and to move rural Pacific society away from the tendency to spend at whim.

“Instead of managing money effectively, instead of spending it on nutritious food, improved housing or better health care, money is often spent on junk food, betel nut, trips to Honiara and alcohol,” said Linda McMillan, UNDP’s financial literacy officer in Solomon Islands. The ANZ/UNDP partnership started in the Solomon Islands early last year.”