In the first week of July (1/ 7/2019 – 8/7/2019) two members of the Youthtopia team ,had the opportunity to participate in the Erasmus + program “Money does not grow on trees” in Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic, a fairly large city (~ 100,000 inhabitants) located 2 hours away from Prague. The project was organized by the Czech NGO KURO Hradec Kralove.
When we first arrived and saw the city ( Hradec) we were amazed by the organization, its architecture and the very helpful locals who helped us find the right bus that would take us to the hotel, where we would stay for the next week.
The program was divided into 2 parts, the first aimed at getting to know each other and networking between the organizations, while the second aimed to create a workshop for the Erasmus + training course that would take place 2 weeks later.
The participants who took part in the project, were either members of voluntary groups operating in their own countries or experienced / skilled people in financial literacy ,which was the subject of the training course to follow. All the participants were amazing and it was impressive how many different cultures had the opportunity to get to know each other, with participants from Martinique (French colony in the Caribbean), Portugal,Bulgaria, Italy, Lithuania,Greece, Slovakia, Vietnam, Turkey, Nigeria and of course Czech Republic.
The project was very interesting and especially its topic, financial literacy, a topic that is very neglected by Greek education. Through a combination of formal learning (eg presentations) and non-formal learning (eg games) we had the opportunity to get acquainted with good money management practices and concepts such as investing, bonds, interest rates etc. . In addition, we had the opportunity to get acquainted with the state of the economy and education in sound money management in the participating countries and to exchange views and ideas on how to address the problem of inadequate information on the issue.
In summary, the week in Czech Republic was great, we got to meet people from many parts of the world, we got acquainted and trained on a very interesting and useful topic and had a great time. It’s an experience we would recommend to everyone.
From Manos and Dimitris, members of Youthtopia.
