Last Updated on Thursday, 10 March, 2022 at 10:53 am by Andre Camilleri
For the eighth year running, the Malta Bankers’ Association (MBA) is organizing a series of events and activities in conjunction with European Money Week (EMW), which this year is being held between the 21 and 25 March 2022.
EMW will focus on financial education and raise awareness amongst students about money and personal finances. Throughout this week, many financial educational events will be organized across Europe by the European Banking Federation (EBF), of which the MBA is a member and its other national banking associations.
“This annual initiative, which is also aligned with the OECD International Network on Financial Education’s Global Money Week (OECD/INFE), involves young people in more than 35 European countries, with activities ranging from classroom sessions to seminars, webinars and conferences. All activities seek to improve financial literacy through better financial education. Thus, EMW is a crucial part of EBF’s mission to promote financial literacy in Europe through such events, publications and partnerships,” said Karol Gabarretta, Secretary General of the MBA.
This year’s programme of events for EMW 2022 is packed with various events, all of which centre around the themes chosen by the EBF and OECD/INFE, namely ‘Supercharging Financial Skills’ and ‘Build your Future, be Smart about Money’, respectively. All events have been organised by the MBA in collaboration with Home Economics Seminar Centre (HESC) within the Directorate for Learning and Assessment Programmes (DLAP) of the Ministry for Education and Sport, the Malta Financial Services Authority, Junior Achievement Young Enterprise Malta (JAYE), the Central Bank of Malta, the Malta Stock Exchange Institute, GEMMA, the Cyber Crime Unit of the Malta Police and a representative from the insurance sector.
This year’s programme continues to build on the notion adopted a couple of years ago that financial literacy is much more extensive than just imparting knowledge on banking services and products. Accordingly, through this year’s venture the MBA and its partners have collaborated to encompass interventions with a more comprehensive financial significance.
An event which was an intrinsic part of past editions of EMW will be the ‘Financial Literacy Challenge’ for Year 4 to Year 6 students and Year 7 to 11 students. This competitive event will require individual students and school teams to plan and implement projects aimed at promoting awareness related to financial literacy, education and inclusion.
The MBA will award prizes to the winning and second-placed individuals/school teams.
EMW activities will again comprise a train-the-trainer event namely, a ‘Professional Development Training’ online session for teachers. This event will feature speakers from a number of areas connected with the wider definition and concept of financial literacy as explained above.
Other events planned include the ‘Be Wise – Pay Smart’programme for those students forming part of the local Prince’s Trust Group. JAYE will also deliver its ‘Europe My Business’ programme to two particular schools while the CBM will also contribute to the week’s events through ‘Be Money Smart’, its newly launched online programme intended for Year 6 students in both state and non-state schools.
Last, but certainly not least, although strictly speaking not within EMW itself, the MBA in collaboration with the Department of Accounting and Business Studies within the DLAP, will for the second year running, organise an online national competition on the 29 March in preparation for the EBF’s European Money Quiz (EMQ). The national competition will select two participants who will represent Malta at the EMQ to be held on the 10 May. The MBA will award prizes to the first and second-placed students.
The EMQ organised by the EBF has taken place since 2018 as a European-wide competition to improve the financial literacy skills of children between the ages of 13 to 15 years. The quiz attracts hundreds of thousands of children from 30 European countries.
