Financial Manager, Greg Evans volunteered his services for the morning on October 2nd to assist Stoke Newington School, in Hackney with Inspire, the Education Business Partnership for Hackney’s ‘Money Matters Day’. This involved supporting year 11 students aged 15-16 on 3 workshops, focusing on financial literacy, personal budgeting skills and issues of earning, saving and managing money. These were all based on real life scenarios, which enabled students to take real responsibility for developing their own solutions as well as working together as self managed teams.

270 students took part and two volunteers were to each class of 25 students, as well as a teacher. Not only did the students learn and reap enjoyment from the day, Greg states: “I found the morning both challenging and rewarding. It seemed a little daunting at first but the students responded well to the various sessions and at times the discussions were lively and interesting. I would look forward to another one in the future.”

The student’s main objectives of the day were:

• Organising themselves as  apart of a group
• Developing key enterprise skills such as teamwork, communication, risk management and decision making
• Taking into account real life scenarios and family finances
• Putting together realistic proposals that could be implemented
• Presenting clearly their ideas for review and consideration