In Singapore, an innovative project is training frontline staff and volunteers to give financial guidance to low-income families.
Innovative training for Singapore’s frontline staff and volunteers

In Singapore, an innovative project is training frontline staff and volunteers to give financial guidance to low-income families.
How does a nation train over a million social workers to help build the financial capability and assets of their clients? What should social workers in China know about finance, and what is the best way to teach them? Weighing these matters, researchers and several of China’s top social workers proposed changes at the First […]
The Center for Social Development at Washington University’s Brown School is once again engaged in partnership for development of social work in mainland China. The focus is on financial capability.
Financial Capability and Asset Building for All is one of the 12 Grand Challenges for Social Work and a growing practice in the social work profession. The Center for Social Development is committed to working with its partners to increase the financial capability of individuals, families, and communities across the globe!
Grier and Johnson presented an overview of the Grand Challenges and expanded on two Grand Challenges: “Promote smart decarceration,” and “Build financial capability and assets for all.”
A program specialist from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and a senior consultant from ICF helped to lead a recent professional development workshop at the Brown School, “Behind on Bills: Tools to Help Your Clients Secure Greater Financial Well-Being.”
The Center for Social Development hosted a seminar this month for social workers and others from South Korea, part of a larger training program focused on developing financial capability for Korean youth.
Top Ghana officials, representatives from more than 20 financial institutions and practitioners met in April in Accra, Ghana, to learn about YouthSave research findings and how they could encourage young people to open bank accounts and save.
Dean Khinduka built the modern research-oriented George Warren Brown School of Social Work. He is also a dedicated leader committed to furthering the social work profession.
Nearly 50 scholars, educators, researchers and macro social work practitioners met in January in Washington, D.C., for the convening on Financial Capability & Asset Building: Moving Forward.
In 2010, researchers in the vast YouthSave Initiative started investigating whether low-income youth can build savings in the developing countries of Colombia, Ghana, Kenya and Nepal. Now their findings are summarized in a newly released report.
YouthSave researchers gathered recently in Washington, D.C., to discuss what they learned over five years about how to provide scalable saving mechanisms to low-income youth—and what their findings could mean for youth development and financial inclusion.
The U.S. Department of Labor on Monday confirmed a grant to St. Louis YouthBuild of $1.06 million to support academic and occupational skills training for at-risk youth. Washington University is is a partner with YouthBuild, a relationship that was seeded by an event early this year initiated by the Center for Social Development.
A groundbreaking project examining the attitudes and practices of young people in developing economies toward saving money has led to new findings that confirm and challenge assumptions about youth saving at formal financial institutions.
Children in four developing countries saved more than $1.8 million during the YouthSave initiative, one of the largest scientific studies of the effect of savings on people ages 12 to 18.
The Great Recession and its aftermath — slow recovery, unemployment, underemployment and economic malaise — have produced an era unseen since the Great Depression. In an effort to study causes and find solutions, Washington University in St. Louis faculty from across disciplines are examining economic insecurity through the university’s Livable Lives Initiative.
Low-income youth in developing countries will save their money in a formal account when given the right opportunity.
Representatives from the Center for Social Development at Washington University recently traveled halfway around the world to meet with colleagues from the YouthSave Consortium, and had the unique opportunity to talk with Nepalese youth and learn more about their savings experience.
Do Ghanaian youth have money? How do they get it? What do they do with it? These are questions we are beginning to answer in YouthSave using data from a baseline survey of over 6,000 in-school youth.