Financial Literacy in Marginalised Communities

Project summary

Project Rationale: This project is addressed towards increasing the financial literacy of females in marginalised, refugee and NEET youth communities who are at an increased disadvantage due to their comparatively low level of financial literacy and the way in which this is translates into daily life. Financial literacy is defined as: “a combination of awareness, knowledge, skill, attitude and behaviour necessary to make sound financial decisions and ultimately achieve individual financial well-being.” We are aiming to build on the previous financial literacy projects: - FLY Project (which created an e-course addressed to the general public) and aimed at delivering the course content to target groups in Secondary Education, Higher Education and Adults in the general public. - The Home Budget Management Project focused on providing financial literacy to “students, youth, adults, or seniors” as the need for financial planning education increases throughout Europe, due to several factors, including “globalization, ICT growth and overwhelming inflow of new, completely innovative goods”. The OECD Secretary-General in his PISA address in 2016 stated: “Financial literacy can make a crucial difference in the lives of people, in their opportunities, in their success. It is a foundation stone for well-being, for entrepreneurship, for social mobility, for inclusive growth.” There are growing communities and groups (such as refugees, traveller communities, NEET youths) which are disadvantaged to the extent that they are limited by the cultural habits and perceived norms when it comes to financial management and financial literacy. The OECD Report of 2016, indicated that this is especially prevalent in females of the G20 countries, stating: “In all but three of the [G20] countries with sufficient data, there is a statistically significant difference between the proportion of men and women achieving the minimum target score on the financial knowledge questions.” We aim to provide these groups with the support and VET training they need to bridge the gap in their skills, knowledge and attitudes towards financial literacy. The aim of this project is to increase the target groups’ capacity to cope with the demands of life financially, in a different culture, with minimal support networks, and to enable them to increase their financial literacy through a series of interactive activities, outputs and extensive dissemination activities. We aim to deliver the intellectual outputs in the languages most commonly spoken by refugee, migrant and marginalised community groups to allow the material to be accessed by those most vulnerable and who have the disadvantage of not speaking the native language of the country they currently reside in. We have chosen partners in the United Kingdom, Italy, Austria, Project Activities: Phase 1: Period of research into financial cultural norms of marginalised communities and refugees in partner countries to create an index of the cultural financial literacy and cultural financial norms among target groups Phase 2: Identification of most common gaps in financial literacy and culturally accepted financial literacy issues Phase 3: Increasing the target groups’ financial literacy will be done by making the target groups undertake a financial literacy test, to gauge their current level of understanding of Phase 4: The target languages for each of the intellectual outputs is: Arabic, Italian, French and English. Phase 5: Piloting Phase 6: Evaluation Phase 7: Dissemination Intellectual Outputs: 1. Taxonomy of financial literacy terms and areas according to past published literature, reports, studies and projects 2. Report on cultural financial norms amongst identified communities and ethnic refugee groups 3. A framework/best practice guide to designing financial literacy course 4. A framework/best practice guide to interventions to increase financial literacy among target groups 5. Holistic and adaptable financial literacy curriculum