For the eighth time, Bank Millennium Foundation in a joint effort with the Verba Foundation organized workshops in financial education designed for preschool children. Between 19 May and 1 July, more than 60 kindergartens conducted classes aimed at expanding financial knowledge among the youngest.

In recent years, the professional situation, the way work is organized, and the financial condition of millions of Polish households were subject to significant changes, which for many minors may have caused an increase in anxiety. Very often, negative emotions may result from a lack of understanding of the causes and nature of the changes taking place. In response to the need to increase the awareness in the area of financial management, the Bank Millennium Foundation together with the Verba Foundation organized the next edition of the Financial ABC - a project aiming to expand the knowledge of financial issues, money and personal budget management in preschool children.

- For many years, the issue of financial knowledge of Poles has given reasons for concern. Although compared to the OECD report from 2016, in which Poland took the last place in the ranking of financial awareness, our country has recently recorded some progress, we still have a lot of catching up to do. The general level of financial literacy is not much higher than the average for all the countries surveyed. Continuously, the problematic issues are the low level of personal savings, lack of the ability to invest, problems with balancing the household budget or the tendency to succumb to temporary and cost-intensive fashions. Assuming that the best method of counteracting these negative phenomena is education from an early age, the animators of the Verba Foundation and employees of Bank Millennium conducted a number of meetings during which preschoolers learned about money through play – says Paulina Wołosz-Sitarek, Member of the Management Board of the Bank Millennium Foundation.

During the project, which lasted over a month, 64 educational institutions in 22 cities in Poland were visited. Participants of over 200 educational workshops had the opportunity to get to know the next edition of Sebastian's adventures - a dog mascot known from the previous editions, which is the main character of educational materials developed by Bank Millennium employees. This year, the workshop programme also introduced concepts of online security and new technologies in response to the growing need to educate the youngest in this area.

In 2020, the fourth part of the textbook-booklet and the fourth episode of the animated video with Mr. Sebastian were created, which in an accessible way explained the basics of the world of finance to kids. Getting to know Mr. Sebastian's adventures children could learn, among other things, that you can pay for your ice cream not only in cash, and you can also have your payment card on your phone. As the title character said – “Now you can use your mobile, and I am not joking, the same way you use the card! You can use all banking in it – transfer money, make savings."

This year's story of Mr. Sebastian contained hints about online safety. To safely bank online, we should follow several rules. For preschool children, four of them are the easiest to understand:

• protect access to your computer, tablet or mobile with a password (tell it to your parents only),
• do not give your personal information to anyone (for instance, your surname, address) and do not post your photographs online,
• use only a trusted network (avoid connecting to a public network e.g. in a cafe) according to rules defined with your parents,
• often check with your parents whether the computer, tablet or phone are free from viruses; talk to your parents about what you were doing online on a particular day.

The booklet “Mr. Sebastian and new technologies” has been prepared and introduced to the programme of workshops conducted in kindergartens, and in its multimedia version it is still available on the Foundation's YouTube channel.