This three year project began in October 2005 with the support of HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland). The main aims of the Financial Awareness Programme is to raise the level of financial literacy amongst young people within UK Youth's membership network and to provide encouragement and support for young people to select a challenge at any stage of the Youth Achievement Awards that demonstrates the acquisition of financial skills.
Background info
The Financial Challenge was devised as a way of raising young people's awareness of the importance of financial literacy as a key skill. This programme will enable financial issues to be integrated easily into a group's Youth Achievement Award programme. The Youth Achievement Awards provide a setting for raising financial awareness, where young people have access to opportunities.
The Key stages are:
Materials development
A Financial Awareness Toolkit (the FAT pack) of activities and resources for workers to use with young people has been developed and is available to workers who attend the Financial Awareness training events. The promotional flyer to encourage young people to have a financial literacy focus within their Youth Achievement Awards is listed below.
Training
The promotional and resource packages will be supported by free training opportunities for workers, which will be designed to enable them to make the most effective use of the resources. Please go to the Training Calendar section to download the booking forms for the Developing and Accrediting Financial Awareness through the Youth Achievement Awards training
Recognition
The programme will recognise, celebrate and reward young people who engage with the programme. A reward programme will encourage young people to complete one or more Financial Challenges. The number of incentives at each level will be agreed for each year of the programme.
Once a young person has completed one or more financial challenges (these don’t need to be based on challenges described in the tookit) the Award Group Worker should complete the attached Financial Awareness Claim Form and send this back to Charmaine Simpson at UK Youth. We will then send the young person (via the Award Group Worker) a specially produced Financial Awareness challenge certificate and a small reward for their involvement. Currently we have a range of credit card holders, wallets, document wallets and gift vouchers available as incentives for young people and to enable us to collect accurate data on the development of the project.
