Mongolia is one of the leading countries in Asia for national integration of Aflatoun programmes into national education curricula. Our Mongolian partner GFDA, Golden Fund for Development Association, is the driving force behind this successful integration.

GFDA was founded as an initiative by XacBank employee volunteers in 2003. The NGO was built with the mission of preparing the development of Mongolia’s next generation children and youth, and improve their living environment.

In 2010, GFDA started a pilot with the Aflatoun programme. 130 trained teachers were trained and gave the programme a great start. From 2010 to 2015, the program reached around 16 thousand children in total. Teachers and parents were so satisfied with the results that they requested involvement of more children. Currently both the Aflateen and Aflatoun programme are being implemented

With these good results in the pocket, GFDA stayed inspired and very active in the development of Aflatoun programmes. Just recently they trained 25 master trainers that will be sent out nationwide to train 870 teachers. Furthermore they started Aflatoun for Junior high school with 6000 students, and they are now developing Aflateen student and teacher books for senior high school.

The chair of GFDA, Ms. Oyunchimeg, recently reported that the financial education component of Aflatoun had been successfully integrated into the national education curriculum as an elective subject for 10^th graders. In this 2016/17 school year, all the students who choose for the Business Study course were taught this Financial Curriculum. Around 11,000 students chose that topic. Only shortly after this success, the Ministry of Education approved nationwide integration of the Aflatoun financial education curriculum for Primary and Secondary school as well. The pre-planning for this has already begun in order to be able to start the program in school year 2017/2018.

The successful integration of Aflatoun curricula into the Mongolian national education from Primary to Senior High School will hopefully inspire all of Aflatoun’s partners globally, and especially in Asia, to do the same in their own context. There are many best practices and lesson learned to be shared. Meanwhile, let us give our highest appreciation for all the effort our GFDA colleagues did that led to an exceptional well received programme.

Find more information on Golden Fund for Development Association on their website.