The 2014 Children’s Savings Conference organized by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) recently provided a fantastic opportunity to learn about developments in the domestic Children’s Savings Account (CSAs) field. The conference also offered a limited opportunity for global/domestic cooperation as discrete portions of the program highlighted international work in this field. YouthSave was well represented, with YouthSave’s Director, Rani Deshpande, speaking at the session on Effective Strategies for Boosting Family Participation, and staff distributing project publications and sharing information at the Idea and Exchange during the first evening’s reception.
The Gateway to Economic Security: Addressing the Needs of Vulnerable Children and Parents session provided some key insights into domestic work that has been undertaken as part of a family-serving system that targets the needs of particularly vulnerable children. The discussion during this panel focused greatly on the impact child savings accounts can have on a host of wellbeing indicators. Not only were issues around expectation and aspiration considered, but also broader, often less known benefits of CSAs were discussed including potential maternal mental health benefits. Overall, the panelists were optimistic that their individual plans could provide a way to fulfill the needs of vulnerable kids and families more holistically through increasing economic opportunity and enabling access to social capital. These programs are consonant with conceptualizations of poverty and inequality as multi-generational issues.
Though the actually enrolled and contemplated participant (some of these projects were not yet off-the-ground) numbers were rather small and the nuances of the projects raised some questions about scalability, the overarching concern from both, this panel and the conference more generally, was the issue of sustainability as related to, and independent of, the potential to scale CSA programs. Time and time again proponents and practitioners noted the long-term investment that CSAs required and the limitations encountered by projects funded exclusively or primarily through philanthropy. Though some solutions were cited including potentially disruptive philanthropic initiatives such as crowdsourcing models, the questions of sustainability and scalability were persistent.
No answers emerged at the end of the conference though most in the field were resolute to find a way to extend the potential benefits of CSAs to as many children as possible. At YouthSave, we are beginning to contemplate precisely these issues as we gear ourselves for the last year of the project. Our youth products have been subsidized and each country is beginning to contemplate scalability and sustainability without subsidy. We look forward to sharing what happens in the coming months.
