The main goal of our activity in Thailand is to strengthen financial capabilities of people with low income. To achieve this, we are implementing interventions like financial literacy trainings and coaching of trainers who are regional staffs of our project partner – the Government Savings Bank.
In 2018 and 2019 the project has prepared 2 groups of trainers which are implementing the Money Management (MM) training and the Savings Game with target groups of Thailand’s Northeast region. An expansion to a new province and a new trainer batch was planned for 2020, however the pandemic changed our plans, and the activity could only be implemented in May 2022.
To be qualified for Money Management training implementations, trainer candidates had to participate in a Training of Trainers (ToT) lead by a DSIK international field expert. The ToT was carried out for 6 days in which the trainer candidates went through different steps in their qualification process.
At first, they took part of the Money Management training as participants to understand the content and the training dynamics. Following that, they received ToT Modules on training methodology like Adult Learning Principles, time management, foundations of facilitation among others. Finally, the trainers had to prepare their own performance and deliver MM modules by themselves. Their performances were carefully observed by the master trainers who gave detailed feedback to each trainer at the end of the ToT. Even though the training methodology is very new and unusual for the trainers, they have embraced it and shown openness and interest to know more about the participatory approach. They are both keen and excited to start practicing and improving their new skills and delivering the MM to the target group.
The trainers are expected to start implementing the MM training with the target group in June this year. But their education doesn’t stop here. The project team will observe their performance, coach them and provide qualitative feedbacks at the end the training with the aim to improve the quality of their performance. After several implementations, the trainers participate in a follow-up workshop with the project team where they have the chance to clarify questions regarding training content and methodology and reinforce their knowledge. Besides that, every group of trainers has set up a social media group which serves as a support forum to obtain answers related to the MM training, coordinate activities and share their views.
Once the trainers have mastered the MM training content and methodology and have few implementations behind, more ToTs with different contents such as Foundations of Savings and Debt Management will be organized for this trainer batch. Hence, setting up a new trainer batch and preparing them to deliver high quality trainings is a comprehensive and sometimes tedious process. At DSIK we are thankful for the support our partner Government Savings Bank is providing in this process.
