In Indonesia, honor-policy shops teach kids about financial integrity
by Alys Matthews, with reporting by Edwin Bimo, communications officer for ChildFund Indonesia
It’s lunchtime at Maria’s elementary school in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, and children are flocking out of their classrooms to form a line where she sits: at the entrance to a room the size of a large closet. A sign over the door reads “Honesty Snack Shop.” Students move through the room picking up snacks, cold drinks and school supplies. Before they leave, they pay for their treats by depositing money into a cardboard box by the exit.
In this shop, there is no cash register to ring up each purchase, no teachers to oversee the buzz of activity — only Maria and two of her friends, who stand by to help kids who have questions. The assumption, of course, is that the children will be scrupulous and deposit the correct amount of money for the items they have taken.
In the adult world, this probably wouldn’t be such a sustainable business model. But in elementary schools across Indonesia, ChildFund-supported Honesty Snack Shops are not only working — they’re teaching students valuable lessons about independence, discipline and financial literacy.
“The snack shop teaches us to be honest. It also teaches us mathematics,” says Maria. “When the amount of money is more than the price of their snack, students pick up their change themselves. We help our fellow students when they need assistance in purchasing the snacks here.”
“Usually, first-grade students,” her friend, Nahak, chimes in. “They are still 7 years old and usually do not understand how to make purchases.” She’s used to helping the younger kids use basic addition and subtraction to figure the correct purchase price or the correct amount of change — a process that strengthens everyone’s confidence in their math skills while encouraging students to ask questions and work together to solve problems.
ChildFund and one of our local partner organizations in Indonesia, Lembaga Pengembangan dan Perlindungan Anak (Institute for the Development and Protection of Children), or LPP, launched Honesty Snack Shop at Maria’s school in 2012 as part of our Child-Friendly Schools project. The innovative program focuses on building children’s financial literacy and life skills to help combat poverty at the individual level. In addition to opening the shop, ChildFund and LPP have also teamed up with local banks to teach children about financial management, including saving their own pocket money. To date, the program has reached over 10,000 children in elementary schools across East Nusa Tenggara.
“When the Honesty Snack Shop started its business, I and other teachers collected a joint fund of our own money to establish the shop. I remember it was 150,000 rupiah per teacher [approximately $10],” says Kristina Dahu, former headmaster at Maria’s school. She says that at first, teachers had to assist students with managing and making purchases at the shop. Now, however, they only record the turnover — which has been more than anyone expected.
“To date, the savings from the profit of our sales is more than 60 million rupiah [$5,000],” says Wilhelmina Bete Mauk, a first-grade teacher who helps monitor the shop.
At the end of each academic year, those profits are used to purchase gifts for all the students. “We purchase snacks, books and paper, wrap them and give the present to each student,” Mauk says. “Every Christmas, students also get a present from the shop, which is purchased from a portion of the Honesty Snack Shop’s profit.” It’s a way of rewarding the students for their honesty throughout the year.
Their remarkable integrity is paying off in other ways, too. At Maria’s school, Honesty Snack Shop has been so successful that the local government recently selected it as a model for other schools in the area. This year, the school even received government assistance in the form of 25 laptops, two desktop computers and a canteen room, which — you guessed it — the children plan to turn into a new and improved Honesty Snack Shop.
