Amr Banaja
Today, the objectives of many Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs go beyond simply making monetary donations to good causes in the wider community. The goal of many is all about providing education, and raising awareness about necessary life skills. Educational CSR programs are expected to create a long-lasting and sustainable impact that can be evidenced and measured.
However, traditional classroom education can be limiting in terms due to the investment required to achieve geographic reach, and consistent training quality and overall impact. While the majority of investment in CSR education programs should be spent on the most important elements of developing the program content to meet the needs of its audience, and ensuring those most in need of the program have access to it.
Budgets often require huge amounts of time-consuming fundraising, not to mention costs, such as management expenditures associated with the staff required to deliver the program, sundries such as printing of materials, and analyzing results. This traditional approach is both inefficient and unsustainable.
The Riyali Financial Literacy CSR Program
The Riyali Financial Literacy Program is one example of CSR activity that has faced these challenges and chosen to embrace e-learning as viable and effective solution.
The youth program, developed by SEDCO Holding Group, addresses the need to educate the Saudi population on financial literacy and empower people with personal financial skills for the 21st century. In 2012, the program set itself a target to reach 50,000 young people within five years. Delivery was purely through traditional classroom-based training.
In the three years hence, Riyali has already reached its target, with over 400 active volunteers delivering the program in more than 90 schools and universities in 22 cities across Saudi Arabia.
As well as the extensive reach of the program, the impact on the beneficiaries themselves has proven to be positive. Both attitudes and behaviors were tested for students one year post completing the Riyali course versus their peers who had not taken the course.
A year on from completing the course, students who have taken the course had increased awareness of the pertinent issues towards savings by 50%, towards investing by 25%, towards borrowing by 65% and towards budgeting by 72%.
More importantly, their actual behaviors towards savings increased by 28%, towards budgeting by 20%, towards borrowing by 43% and towards investing by 36%, when compared to those who had not taken the course.
The fact that young people around the world — not just in Saudi — are more concerned with the “here and now” rather than investing for the future, reflects the low levels of awareness in investing.
The same applies to the ‘actual behaviors’ figures. Riyali is all about equipping youth with the financial literacy they will need throughout their entire lifetime, and doesn’t demand instant adherence to its credo. It’s worth remembering that Riyali is an academic, exam-based course, and that 80% of participants pass the course.
The above figures were taken from 40 students on the course, half of whom were aware their responses were being monitored, and the other half not.
As 60% of Saudi Arabia’s population of 30 million is under 25 years old, the potential audience that can benefit from such a program is huge, and SEDCO Holding Group are keen to expand the number of beneficiaries through a scalable and sustainable model
Riyali embraces e-learning
An up-front investment was made by SEDCO Holding Group to ensure that the new Riyali e-learning program (and its resultant impact) would rival that of any classroom learning. To enable the content to be online-friendly, Riyali used its top ten trainers to create video lessons, along with online reading materials, discussion boards and an exam.
New materials were also developed to bring the e-learning to life, including case studies from young entrepreneurs and celebrities providing their own advice about money management.
Riyali first made the content available on established e-learning platforms with a captive student base such as Duroob and Rwaq and will soon have their own e-learning site. Now more students can benefit from the course. Further, Riyali can focus both efforts and funds on program development rather than program delivery.
In July 2015, SEDCO piloted the new online Riyali Financial Literacy Program on the Rwaq platform. Through this popular Saudi-based e-learning platform, the program has so far reached 10,000 students in less than two months.
Initial feedback and results have been hugely positive, with 89% of students saying the course had changed their perception towards budgeting, 91% having changed perceptions towards savings, and 83% having perceptions changed towards borrowing. In addition to this, a staggering 98% of students who took part in the e-learning course said they would recommend it to a friend.
One student summarized his experience by saying: “All credit to SEDCO Holding Group and Rwaq for offering an enriching experience and insightful lessons through the Riyali Financial Literacy Program. I wish other companies would follow in their footsteps when it comes to serving the community. Thank you once again and best of luck for everyone.”
Future of e-learning, and SEDCO’s approach to CSR
The Riyali example is just one of many where e-learning has benefited educational CSR programs through reach, impact, and sustainability. With technology, the challenge of sustainability and scalability for most educational-based Corporate Social Responsibility Programs can become opportunities.
Whilst in-classroom training will remain for a long time, e-learning is certainly something to consider and the question now for Riyali and other Social Responsibility programs is how much time and effort will they be spending on e-learning vs. in classroom training.
