Banking association evaluates its StarSaver programme

Genesis Analytics was contracted by the Banking Association South Africa (BASA) to conduct a retrospective evaluation of the StarSaver™ programme. Since its inception in 2008, 23 banks and 43 financial institutions have participated in the programme.

StarSaver™ is a school-based programme that allows volunteers from participating banks and financial institutions to deliver hour-long lessons on savings to learners up to grade seven.

The purpose of the evaluation was to assess whether StarSaver™ had achieved its objectives of fostering a culture of saving and promoting volunteerism in the financial sector.

This was an ex-post evaluation and the Banking Association South Africa had minimal M&E data available from the programme for the past 10 years. This required the Genesis team to generate data through fieldwork in the schools that had received StarSaver™ and in those that received it for the first time in 2017. Data was also collected from participating stakeholders and volunteers from banks and financial institutions.

The data-collection method used with the learners was a 30-second financial game that allowed learners to engage with the evaluation.