In the three-year FINALLY – Financial literacy for the Roma project (funded by the European Union through the Lifelong Learning Programme), RIC Novo mesto, together with project partners from Italy, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Slovakia, has carefully thought through every step in the creation and development of a programme to improve the financial literacy of the Roma people. Initially, using a common methodology, we carried out a study on the financial literacy needs of the Roma population in each of the six partner countries. Based on these findings, we developed a 56-hour training programme, which comprises four modules: Household budgeting – planning in advance and spending money wisely; Saving for the future; Borrowing sensibly; Increasing income.

The programme is designed for young Roma adults, who often achieve a higher level of education than their relatives, and are more receptive to learning. They are becoming increasingly independent in terms of managing their finances and are the key actors of social change.

In the next step, we developed a teaching manual which is to be used as a tool for training the educational programme providers before then being used by providers who are already qualified to teach this target group. The tools or teaching materials included within each topic of the manual also feature in the Workbook for the participants. PowerPoint presentations detailing the key points for each topic were also created. In order to assist the teaching and learning processes, we also created a new educational board game called Romonopoly, which focuses on various financial concepts and real-life financial situations.

In addition to having trained teachers, professionals, and Roma mediators to implement this training programme, we have also tested the programme and materials with the Roma target group in each partner country. On the basis of the results and feedback received from the pilot implementations, the material was further improved. The translations into all partner languages and English were published in print and electronic forms.

The programme and materials can also be modified to suit other target groups. We strongly recommend that you take full advantage of this opportunity.