Bee Coins – Financial Education Debunked project took place in a nice small and peaceful city in the Netherlands, more precisely in Ommen. The project was organized by Bees Empowered and was funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Union.
The topics of the project were numerous, some of them being: spending habits, saving money, being a cool consumer, bank accounts & financial products for youth, how to make a budget, how to use money to solve social problems and many others.
In this project, we had participants from 7 different countries: Romania, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands and Greece. The project was based on informal education and contained different types of activities, both indoor and outdoor.
One of the many interesting activities in which we have participated was interviewing people, not only from Ommen, but also from other cities like Amsterdam, Utrecht, Zwolle, Dalfsen or Rotterdam. We asked them about their spending habits and about their saving behaviors, but we also asked about other topics like job opportunities in the Netherlands or new business opportunities. The locals were very sociable and friendly and willing to talk and each of us learned things that were of personal interest.
Another thing we have learned in this exchange was about the tools we can use to help us save money, by keeping track of our expenses. With the technology today, there are plenty of apps that we can have on our phones and that are really easy to use: PocketGuard, MoneyLover, Wally, Level Money, Spendee, Mint etc. With MoneyLover someone can input the earnings, the expenses by category and the budget established for the next month. The app will let us know when we are approaching the budget and when we have exceeded it. At the end of the month, we are given a really great overview of the money we have spent and earned. This tool can help us realize that we spend money on things we don’t really need and this is just a great motivator in order to spend more wisely and save money.
The intercultural night was an amazing experience where we learned a lot about the people around us and we had a lot of fun by dancing on traditional songs specific to each country.
During this project, we also had an amazing journey in ‘dutch’ style, with the bicycles. We went almost 60 km during that day and we visited 2 cities where we interviewed a lot of people. Even though we could not feel our legs for 2 days after, it was worth it.
“For me it was the first time participating in a project like this one, and I can truly say it was interesting. The main thing that I’ve enjoyed was meeting new persons from different cultures and seeing how they think, what problem they encounter and also how they manage to pass over them. It was a nice break from my real life, and I’ve enjoyed it.
“For me it was the first time participating in a project like this one, and it was very interesting. During this exchange I have made new friends and I have learned a lot of new things. I learned how others can save more money and new methods of doing that. The participants shared their point of view in the savings ability. Some of them always kept track of their expenses.
In the end, we returned home sad that the project was over, but also happy that we had the chance to learn so many things, meet nice people and make new friends.