Financial Awareness Project in Tiszaroff Microregion
Support period: January 1, 2017 – December 31, 2017
“Our relationship with money effects our soul too. In order to make progress, we need to fix the foundations, therefore first we need to understand the material to carry on our intellectual way. If we really understand and own the money, it can be – similar to the body – especially useful on the path of our progress. But if it starts to reign over the soul and make us possessed, the body and the money can prevent or even stop our progress. Only those can make a progress and break the chains of material, who reign over these.”
(Ruediger Dahlke: Psychology of Money)
The Financial Awareness Project is a charitable and unique initiative in the Tiszaroff Microregion. The Project aims to improve the carefully elected students’ financial awareness and culture in the support period.
The participants were Roma and Hungarian secondary school students who live in extreme poverty. During the support period eleven (11) students received monthly 50,000 HuF scholarship and for Christmas each of them received one-one food package worth 27,000 HuF. Furthermore, every student got the privilege to participate in the Foundation’s monthly trainings on finance.
Improving Economical and Financial Competencies
Those who come from deep poverty background do not necessarily have the required financial and economical knowledge, therefore they might not always make prudent financial decisions in every life situation. Having said this, we find important to help studying basic knowledge about how the economy works, the relations of economy and everyday life, the correlation of production and consumption, and those factors which influence the prices and costs. Therefore, we plan to use everyday situations to demonstrate how the market works in the correlation of demand and supply. We hope the students can understand the principle of balance, namely that it is important to find balance between the expenditures and incomes. It is also essential to learn in their age that careful financial planning is extremely important in every life situation. Also various situational exercises show the family’s budget’s as the smallest economical units’ most important characteristics.
The students can learn how they can plan for the future, in order to make decisions after careful consideration and to gain a proactive attitude in finances.
Tiszaroff, January, 2017