The Institute’s new financial education programme in Greece in partnership with Action Aid Hellas was launched on 10 December 2019 at the Bank of Greece in Athens.
This will be the first time that systematic and harmonised activities focusing solely on financial education have been implemented in Greece. Government representatives who attended the launch pledged their support to the programme.
“Financial literacy is key to being an active citizen,” said ActionAid Hellas Director Gerasimos Kouvaras. “Financial education plays a crucial role in making citizens aware very early on of the basic principles to making informed and effective decisions with all their financial resources,” added Francisco de Paula Coelho, Dean of the EIB Institute. “The recent financial crisis has shown the importance of such an education, especially for deprived populations.”
The programme addresses primary and secondary school pupils and teachers and aims to create, over the next two years, a network of 2 000 teachers who will train their students later, reaching 42 000 individuals. This will familiarise them with basic economic concepts and offer them the opportunity to apply those skills to their lives through a combination of direct training sessions and awareness-raising activities implemented via a dedicated website.
According to a recent study by the Hellenic Financial Literacy Institute, Greek students between the ages of 12 and 18 are sporadically acquainted with finance-related courses, and only those students who choose the relevant science degree attend a single systematic finance course. Pupils between the ages of 6 and 12 do not come into contact with any finance-related course.
The programme will be implemented by ActionAid Hellas with partner organisations ERGO and Aflatoun International. It follows the success of a similar programme in Bulgaria and an ongoing project in Italy.
Photo: Philippe Huguen / AFP / Getty Images
