About project

Project title: Money & Life Skills – Financial Capability Made Easy
Project number: 2018-1-PL01-KA204-050804
Programme: ERASMUS+ (Adult Education)
Key action: 2 Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices
Type: Strategic Partnerships for adult education Innovation
Duration: from 31/12/2018 to 30/08/2021

This project is co-funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ Programme.

Description:
The escalating numbers of low income and unemployed young adults (18-35) constitutes a severe social problem in the European Union. This group makes up to 40 % of the total young adults in Europe. The OECD states that low income jobs and unemployment leave a “wage scar”, whereby people who are unemployed when they should be at the start of their career can suffer from lower than average wages for decades afterwards. Youth unemployment and low income also does further damage by undermining pension savings, placing millions of young people across Europe at risk of having an inadequate income when they are older.
Improving financial literacy skills of such a disadvantaged group in the EU society will have significant benefits for everyone, since good financial literacy skills help, in combination with other economic “life skills”, individuals to make the most of opportunities, meet their goals, secure their financial well-being, and contribute to the economic health of society.
In this context, there is a great need to equip those young adults with skills to manage their (minimum) income in a way that will sustain their quality of life and their financial and civic competences at decent levels. However, currently available financial literacy trainings are structured in theoretical terms such as “budgeting” or “stock market participation”. We believe that we must refer to real-life situations of these young people, if we want them to become more competent. Therefore, our e-learning modules will cover aspects such as:

  • the first car
  • getting married
  • renting a flat
  • buying a house
  • expecting baby
  • getting divorced
  • losing the job
  • an accident happened
  • making use of consumer rights

Based on this (non-exhaustive!) list we will develop clear and attractive learning materials using simple language of or target group (in all languages of the partnership!) which will upgrade the economic resources of low income and unemployed young adults in Europe.

Leaflet: English / German / Greek / Polish / Spanish / Italian / Slovakian / Slovenian

Newsletter issue 1: English / German / Greek / Spanish / Italian / Slovakian / Slovenian

Newsletter issue 2: English / German / Greek / Spanish / Italian / Slovakian / Slovenian

Newsletter issue 3: English / German / Greek / Spanish / Italian / Slovakian / Slovenian

Partnership

Stowarzyszenie “EBI Association”, Jastrzębie-Zdrój, Poland (Applicant)

EBI Association is a non-profit organization functioning from 2016. It works for the development of Education, Business and Innovation. Knowing how important it is to combine these three pillars in the creation of a modern knowledge-based society, we try to implement projects, which, on the synergy principles, focus on a development of science, entrepreneurship and allow implementation of interesting innovations in the region.

The Association builds its own cooperation network i.a. through contacts with local, regional, and international institutions and organizations.

Contact:

E-mail: biuro@ebi.org.pl

Website: www.ebi.org.pl

Asociación andaluza de apoyo a la infancia - ALDAIMA

ALDAIMA was created in 1998. Since then we have been working for the protection and support of vulnerable children and adolescents.
Since 1999 ALDAIMA has worked to promote family foster care in the Province of Granada and to offer children in need a family environment where to grow up, as an alternative to institutional foster care centres. We offer specialised therapeutic support to children who have experienced crisis situations or family violence. We help these children to overcome the traumatic circumstances they have lived through. We work to favour integration and prevent the appearance of violent behaviour in adolescents and young people at risk.

Contact:

E-mail: asociacion@aldaima.org

Website: www.aldaima.org

Ente Bilaterale Veneto

Ente Bilaterale Veneto FVG is non-profit organization that was constituted in 1996 on a regional level, by Confesercenti, which is a trade association of SMEs in the sector of commerce, tourism and services, and by the three most representative Italian Trade Union, Filcams-Cgil, Fisascat-Cisl, and UilTucs-Uil.
Its constitution is defined in the National Labour Contract Agreement and it aims at improving life and working conditions of the workers and the companies of commerce and tourism.
Its mission is carried out through economic support either to the workers or the companies on issues related to family, health, study, training, welfare, and innovation tools.
In addition to the main goals, Equality Centre carries out many tasks that are often brought to light thanks to visitors of the Equality Centre seeking help, whether it be speaking on legal issues or lobbying for immigrants and women.

Contact:

E-mail: segreteria@ebvenetofvg.it

Website: www.ebvenetofvg.it

Greek Academic Network - GUnet

The non-profit civil company called "Greek Academic Network" (GUnet) was founded in September 12th 2000. GUnet has its central office in Athens and its members are all the Universities and Higher Technological Education Institutes (TEI) in Greece (20 Universities and 16 TEI).
The mission of the company is to promote, facilitate and coordinate the use of information and communication technologies (ICT), services and applications in the Greek academic community for supporting the Greek higher education institutes in their mission and in general, research and education in Greece.
GUnet provides e-learning services to its members and its project partners. It also supports the National Search Portal for OpenCourses and provides guidelines on how to create open courses.
Since 2012, GUnet coordinates the development of OpenCourseWare and open educational resources by its members at the national level.

Contact:

E-mail: info@gunet.gr

Website: www.gunet.gr

INTEGRA INSTITUT, Institut za razvoj clovekovih potencialov

INTEGRA’s mission and vision are based on the development of human potentials whereby the accent is on the provision of services in the field of humanistic sciences for different target and age groups. As public officers for the Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs, our professionals working at the Institute perform special counselling and experts’ work in the field of occupational rehabilitation in close cooperation with the Employment Service of Slovenia and the Pension and Disability Insurance Institute of the Republic of Slovenia.
Furthermore, the central activities of the Institute are based on educational and advisory services and the development and the implementation of social innovations, as well as on the research in the field of human resources.

Contact:

E-mail: office@eu-integra.eu

Website: www.eu-integra.eu

QUALED občianske združenie pre kvalifikáciu a vzdelávanie

QUALED is a non-profit organization working in the field of adult education. Our team focuses in particular on the development, adaptation and innovation of creative and innovative educational products, methods and seminars for adults. Since 2008, QUALED has been involved as didactic expert in many educational projects delivering didactic and methodological expertise in the form of pedagogical counselling, couching, presentations and seminars.
QUALED has been actively involved in development of innovative training tools in both vocational and adult education. During the long term cooperation with various educational organisations covering different areas of vocational training, the didactic team of QUALED has proven the ability to influence diverse areas of education. Besides that, QUALED has co-developed training materials targeting personal competences as well as marketing and entrepreneurship.

Contact:

E-mail: office@qualed.net

Website: www.qualed.net

Wissenschaftsinitiative Niederösterreich

Wissenschaftsinitiative Niederösterreich - Science Initiative Lower Austria (WIN) was founded 1990 as a non-profit association for interdiciplinary, research, consulting and education. Its main activities have been in the field of adult education and labour market related research.
Since 1991 WIN has become active in European projects, especially in managing and coordinating scientific cooperation in European research and education programmes. Since 2008, WIN has been acting as operative partner or coordinator in European transnational projects.
We feel obliged to exploit the vast variety of educational outcomes from our participation in European projects, and to transfer them into our daily activities. To this end, WIN has established an adult education programme that covers the most interesting areas. Courses and seminars take place in our seminar facilities in central Vienna.

Contact:

E-mail: office@wissenschaftsinitiative.at

Website: www.wissenschaftsinitiative.at

Objectives

The overall objectives of our project build on the policy priorities of the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships, as they are:

  1. Objectives/priorities for adult education:
    • Re-skilling, up-skilling literacy, numeracy and digital skills and civic competences: Money & Life Skills will have strong focus in improving numeracy, digital, and financial skills, while indirectly it will also improve the users’ language and reading skills;
    • Access to Open Educational Resources in Education and Training: Money & Life Skills will be fully deployed through open and free access online tools and mediums such an e-learning platform, mobile applications, online games, social media, multimedia applications and networking;
    • Modernize HE systems – access to adults: The Money & Life Skills online modules will be accredited based on the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), where each module will have a certain number of ECTS credits, in order to secure easy integration in education systems;
    • Awareness raising: Money Skills will be supported by a wide awareness raising campaign through social media, multimedia, dissemination seminars and conferences.
  2. Objectives/priorities relevant to all fields:
    • Development of basic and transversal skills: Money & Life Skills will directly improve not only digital skills, basic mathematics and financial skills of young adults, it will indirectly also improve their language and reading skills and civic competences. This will be of special importance for migrants;
    • Promotion of Innovative and learner-centred pedagogical approaches: Money & Life Skills will deploy innovative, learner-centred, ICT based pedagogical approaches that are based on the self-interest of the students;
    • Development of appropriate assessment and certification methods through support of summative assessment methods. Online certificates will be provided to the learners upon completion of each module, accredited by the training institutions of the Money & Life Skills consortium;
    • Provision of tangible learning outcomes: The learning outcomes will immediately become visible in the everyday life of the young adults;
    • Validation of non-formal and informal learning: Money & Life Skills encompasses a series of components related to non-formal and informal learning such as access to online data and games, use of multimedia, forums and social networks. The partners will validate these activities and provide online certificates to the users.

Intellectual outputs

IO 1: Money & Life Skills Concept & Guidelines

The Money & Life Skills Guidelines will provide the didactical background for the e-learning materials and explain the advantages of the project’s approach in comparison to conventional financial literacy initiatives which have a theoretical approach (budgeting, savings, credit, stock market participation etc.).

They will also provide example curricula settings in which ways the materials can be applied in blended learning situations.

IO 2: Money & Life Skills Training Modules

The core contents of Money & Life Skills will consist of various modules. Most of them have been identified at our genuine needs analysis during the preparation of this application. Unlike all other financial literacy initiatives which have a theoretical approach (budgeting, savings, credit, etc.) our contents will refer to real-life situations and the training subjects will be:

  • the first car
  • getting married
  • renting a flat
  • buying a house
  • expecting a baby
  • getting divorced
  • losing the job
  • an accident happened
  • making use of consumer rights

IO 3: Money & Life Skills e-Learning Service and Course Platform

The e-Learning Service will be used as a virtual learning environment where users will be able to find the online modules, participate in learning activities, and communicate with other users, as it supports electronic management, storage and presentation of materials, and multilingual forums for networking, exchange of experience and good practice, with links to real-time translation that breaks down the language barrier between users from different countries.

The e-Learning Service will transform and incorporate the contents of the Money & Life Skills Modules and provide access to the training subjects.

The project will adapt selected online materials from the e-training courses in a pedagogically sound way into integrated apps for smartphones.

IO 4: Money & Life Skills Mobile Applications

Contents from the Money & Life Skills e-Training material that are suitable for presentation in applications for smartphones, plus links to the platform’s multilingual forum and communication tools, will be selected in a pedagogically sound way and developed into integrated native apps for delivering these contents via smartphones and mobile devices.

In this way, we support mobility: learners will have access to their learning material where ever and whenever they need.

All intellectual outputs that were developed under the project Money & Life Skills – Financial Capability Made Easy are available on the e-platform: https://training.moneylifeskills.eu/main/toolbox.php

Target group

teachers, trainers in adult education and in integration measures, labour office advisers and job counsellors, who will use the didactic materials that can be used in various educational settings
financially disadvantaged young adults who are either unemployed or employed on an income lower than the EU average as the final beneficiaries who can use the e-learning modules
adult training institutions, debt counselling services, social services, local community groups, youth organizations, civil society organizations, higher education institutions) as stakeholders

Meetings

Transnational project meetings:

1st TPM – kickoff meeting:

Dates: 27/02/2019

Venue: Vienna, Austria

Host organisation: Wissenschaftsinitiative Niederösterreich

Agenda

 

2nd TPM – developer workshop

Dates: 25-26/06/2019

Venue: Granada, Spain

Host organisation: Asociación andaluza de apoyo a la infancia – ALDAIMA

Agenda

3rd TPM – midterm plenary meeting

Dates: 6-7/11/2019 

Venue: Jastrzębie-Zdrój, Poland 

Host organisation: Stowarzyszenie “EBI Association” 

Agenda

4th TPM – final meeting

Dates: 20-21/07/2021

Venue: Velenje, Slovenia

Host organisation: INTEGRA INŠTITUT, Inštitut za razvoj človekovih potencialov

Agenda