A real time bank, an alternative propulsion car created with recycled materials, a dramatization format of the different situations linked to the exchange of resources: these are the three Start Ups, conceived by the children of as many primary schools, awarded by the jury of “Ideas of the future, the dream in my head”. The competition, part of the "Grow your dream" financial education project promoted by ING Italia, saw 354 classes from 152 primary schools work as if they were small start-ups to identify and solve the needs of the community through original and innovative projects.
The aim of "Cultivate your dream", in its 9th edition, is to bring primary school children closer - through a creative and proactive approach - to the optimal management of the resources at their disposal (money, time, natural resources) in a planning. As for a Start Up, the training kit made available by ING Italia collects the teaching tools to be able to transform a dream into a real project.
"Cultivate your dream again this year wanted to help improve "financial empowerment", i.e. financial awareness and more generally of resource management in the new generations, an issue very dear to ING - comments Silvia Colombo, Head of Corporate Communications & CSR of ING Italia – It has done it once again with an innovative and playful didactic approach capable of making the little ones passionate about a topic that is not always easy to convey. The quality of the documents received and those awarded is the concrete testimony of an educational path that worked well and that contributed to the growth of those who we hope tomorrow will be more aware and informed adults on how to better manage their finances".
The schools that participated in the ING competition created 263 projects which were voted by the social community on the "Cultivate your Dream" website. The 10 most voted online projects were awarded with "BeeBot", a mini robot to learn coding. Among these, a jury selected the three most deserving projects in terms of creativity, relevance to the theme and technical expertise.
The 3th and 4th classes of the "Giotto" School of Valdarno (AR), the 5nd class of the "Villaggio del Fanciullo" School of Visciano ( NA) and the 2nd class of the "Pascoli" School of Cologno Monzese (MI). Furthermore, among the projects that achieved more than 2 votes, the 50 winners of "Kano", a kit for building a do-it-yourself computer, were drawn.
Since its launch in 2008, the “Cultivate your Dream” format has involved 80% of Italian primary schools for a total of 850 children and 13 schools. "Cultivate your dream" also has a charitable purpose: the partnership with UNICEF was renewed for the 2016-2017 edition, which provides for the donation of 30 euros to the association for each class that will participate in the competition, to support education of adolescents in Zambia and Nepal. Since its launch, the partnership with UNICEF has made it possible to support over 43.000 young people and children from developing countries.
According to a recent study by ING, 79% of Italians believe they have little or very little knowledge of basic financial terms. Looking at the younger segments of the population, the Students' Financial Literacy Report distributed by the OECD places fifteen-year-old Italians below the average in tests of financial literacy: two out of ten boys do not reach the minimum threshold of financial literacy and only the 6%, (compared to 11% OECD average) show an adequate understanding of complex financial instruments.
