Between 2016 and 2019, 5 572 pupils (aged 8 to 13) and 546 teachers from 40 different villages in mountain areas of Piedmont benefited from MOLE (MOney LEarning), a financial education project jointly organised by the EIB Institute, Turin’s Museum of Saving (Museo del Risparmio) and Fondazione per la Scuola della Compagnia di San Paolo.

Children were invited to visit Turin’s Museum of Saving, the first interactive multimedia museum dedicated to savings and financial education in the EU. Priority was given to pupils living in remote areas that may not be able to reach the province’s capital. The EIB Institute financed the transportation costs, Fondazione per la Scuola took care of project organisation and the museum admitted the students for free.

In addition, in 2019, 500 pupils from middle schools (aged 11 to 13) were involved in a teaching lab focused on personal money management in order to assess the effectiveness of an alternative teaching methodology.

Visiting pupils were invited to write a short essay on the topic: “what is money for you and how do you plan to use it to reach your life goals and to achieve your dreams?” The best four essays won a voucher for books or electronic equipment.

When asked, the vast majority of the children, teachers and parents were very positive about the usefulness of the visit and believed it was very effective in enabling students to increase their knowledge.

Inspired by the MOLE project, the Institute, the museum and Scania Italia launched the first European “museum on wheels” in October 2018. For seven months, a truck equipped to be an interactive laboratory – with some content from the museum and more developed specifically for the project – visited 22 cities in the south of Italy, teaching 10 000 school-age children how to better use not only financial but also natural resources and to combat wastefulness.