What we do?
Taloustaitohanke is a common project of Deaconess Institute and three Finnish banks. Taloustaitohanke trains young adults to take control over their own personal finances.
Taloustaitohanke advances and strengthens young adults' skills to maintain their personal economics. Our target group is youngsters and young adults who are in a high risk of meeting financial difficulties in their lives. Instructors are trained volunteer professionals from participating banks. Financial training is held by bank employees who are trained by a Taloustaitohanke coordinator.
Banks fund Taloustaitohanke and also offer their employees the possibility to participate in Taloustaitohanke as volunteers. Participating in Taloustaitohanke is free of charge for groups and young people.
Our main operation mode is financial group training. We bring financial training into already existing groups of young adults. Training contains 2-3 one to two-hour sessions held on different days. Training sessions include functional assignments, discussions and teamwork. Topics discussed are, for example, consumption, money related feelings, saving, pay-day loans and budgeting.
Individual training Raha-Amigo takes place in the metropolitan area. Raha-Amigo is personal one-to-one intensive training for one's own financial issues. The issues vary from making a budget to sorting out debts.
The focus in everything we do is in practicality, functionality and appreciative interaction/encountering/dialogue.
Why we do it?
Maintaining one's own personal finances can cause difficulties for our target group. Young age, low income, usually combined with a person not participating in employment, education or training cause a high risk of financial difficulties. Financial difficulties are related to other difficulties in life, such as mental health problems, health problems, misuse of intoxicants and learning disabilities. Helping out with money related issues relieves energy and resources to work with the other issues causing concern in one's life.
