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.

This paper reports on the results of testing hypotheses about factors thought to be positively correlated with better nutritional status for rural children in Mali. These factors include:

1. Higher agricultural incomes and/or household wealth
2. More educated parents
3. Mothers who use recommended feeding and childcare practices
4. Availability and use of well staffed health facilities
5. Parents who are knowledgeable about prevalent childhood diseases
6. Use of recommended hygiene and sanitation practices
7. Parents’ age, health and genetic attributes
8. Location (type of agricultural production system, level of infrastructure, etc.)

Action for Enterprise (AFE) is offering a five-day workshop that presents the latest methodologies and practice for designing value-chain programs that incorporate strategies for sustainable impact. Participants will learn how to design programs that result in market-based solutions to MSME constraints such as market access, input supply, technology/product development, management training, policy reform, and access to finance. Examples will be used from enterprise development programs and practitioners worldwide.

This Report, prepared by the World Bank, examines five pivotal phases of life that can help unleash the development of young people’s potential with the right government policies: learning, working, staying healthy, forming families, and exercising citizenship. Within each of these transitions, governments need not only to increase investments directly but also to cultivate an environment for young people and their families to invest in themselves.

This report makes the case for redirecting the response to HIV and AIDS to address children’s needs more effectively. Drawing on the best body of evidence yet assembled on children affected by AIDS, it shows where existing approaches have gone off track and what should now be done, how, and by whom. The report summarizes the evidence from two years of research and analysis by the Joint
Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS (JLICA).

This report reviews the evidence on conditional cash transfers (CCTs)—safety net programs that have become popular in developing countries over the last decade. It concludes that CCTs generally have been successful in reducing poverty and encouraging parents to invest in the health and education of their children.

The main objective of the report is to provide diagnosis on youth employment, which can provide the basis for future policy design.

This policy outlook examines how public sector employment policies in Syria affect the transition from school to work for young people. Framed within the context of Syria’s transition from a command economy to a social market economy, the analysis highlights how the country’s traditional socioeconomic model still holds sway and drives employment preferences among youth.

How do economic shocks, in particular the current economic downturn, affect the wellbeing of children? What can be done to mitigate harm? This paper explores these questions, presents a framework for analysing the impact of shocks on children in different contexts and suggests initial policy implications.

Child Savings Accounts (CSAs) exist as policies, products, and programs, and are being offered by governments, financial institutions, and non-profits. This paper aims to provide