This expert post from executive director Jeroo Billimoria explains why Aflatoun chose a campaign as the growth and expansion strategy for their social and financial education programme, and what the benefits of this approach have been to date.

Can children manage money? How can they best be taught the importance of saving money and other resources? These are questions Aflatoun is answering through its Campaign for Social and Financial Education. From its 2008 launch in Amsterdam by Princess Maxima of the Netherland, the UN Secretary-General's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, the campaign has pursued one key goal: to provide high quality social and financial education to 1 million children in 75 countries by the end of 2010.

Aflatoun is a Dutch non-profit organization focused on social and financial education for children between the ages of 6-14 years. The Aflatoun program is currently operational in 22 countries reaching over 500,000 children (approximately 200,000 of which have started either individual or group savings accounts), and program materials have been translated into 11 languages.

As we’ve grown, we have struggled to find a meaningful, accurate and cost-reasonable way of measuring our work and our impacts. That process is the subject of this post.