Young people from around the UK are improving their financial capability after learning from their peers who have trained as Barclays Money Skills ‘champions’. Barclays Money Skills ‘champions’ is an innovative peer education project designed to build the financial knowledge and confidence of up to 5,000 young people not in education, employment or training, and equip them with the skills to share this information with their peer group.
Money management
In Milton Keynes, for example, Barclays Money Skills ‘champions’ from ‘MK Dons’ successfully passed on their knowledge and skills to 75 young people aged 16-25, as part of the National Citizenship Service (NCS) four-week programme. During the second week of the programme, ‘champions’ delivered money management sessions to these young people. The subjects covered included understanding their own money habits, budgeting, learning everyday financial terms and planning ahead.
The ‘champions’ worked in groups of threes and fours to deliver the innovative activities to 15 of their peers, using a rotation system through different rooms to ensure that each of the 75 young people experienced every activity. Their Support Workers were on-hand to assist the ‘champions’ where needed.
The ‘champions’ who delivered the money management sessions found the experience very beneficial. ‘Champion’ Sam Trotter said: “Although we had done small sessions in front of our peers, the group had never been this big before. This gave us great experience of talking in front of a big audience, and was a good confidence boost for everybody. Not only did it benefit us as ‘champions’, it gave us useful tools to use in many different aspects of life.”
Community skills
In the fourth week of the NCS programme, participants ran their own community project. This enabled the young people to put the money management skills from Barclays Money Skills ‘champions’ into practice. One of the NCS participants, Jamie Baker, said of the education he had received from the ‘champions’:
“Not only did it help with our personal money management, but it gave all of us ideas to use when running our social action projects, which I am currently doing through NCS with MKDONS SET. The sessions made us think about what we would be buying for the projects, and then what of that we don’t need. This meant we could make savings, and spend more wisely, making other aspects better. Thank you to all the ‘champions’, it was really interesting and engaging.”
We are still recruiting Support Workers for Barclays Money Skills ‘champions’.
Main image: Education 2Day
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