The social enterprise Three Coins is fairly new to the NGO directory. Since we don't come across a social business that deals with financial education every day, NGOJobs asked Three Coins for an interview. Clear the stage for - the development incubator for financial literacy!
NGOJobs: Three Coins - "three coins" - how did you come up with the name? What does it mean for your social enterprise?
Three Coins: The name comes from a Slovakian fairy tale, the "riddle of the three pennies". It's about a man who has three pennies and puts one of them back, lends one and lives off the third. For us, it was a nice metaphor that makes us think about our own money behavior.
NGOJobs: You call yourselves a "development incubator for financial literacy". What do you mean by that?
We develop formats and tools for sustainable money management - ranging from smartphone games, videos and e-mail bootcamps to workshops. Financial literacy is a behavioral skill and we want people to better understand their own behavior and change it for the better. That's why we offer a wide variety of formats in this area and also advise organizations that want to get involved in financial education. In everything we do, we put our social impact before profits. As we see ourselves as a partner organization, collaboration, cooperation and community are deeply woven into our DNA.
NGOJobs: You develop numerous projects around the topic of financial planning. Which project are you particularly proud of?
Phew, that's difficult, we love all our projects! We are enthusiastic about our training courses for youth workers. (Open) youth work is an ideal learning environment for the topic because it's based in the leisure sector and the young people have an open relationship with the youth workers. In one day, youth workers get everything they need to talk to young people about money.
Another project close to our hearts is the Financial EmpowerCamp. For five weeks, participants receive information, rules of thumb and challenges tailored to their own financial persona. As it was so successful in Austria, we are now working on bringing the format to Romania and Germany.
NGOJobs: Who is your target group? Who do you want to reach?
Our vision is that one day everyone will be able to move through life freely and self-determined, without any money worries. There is still a lot to do before we achieve this, as every second Austrian currently has consumer debt.
This is why we initially started to focus primarily on young people. Personal attitudes and behaviors are established very early on, so it is important to us that people come into contact with financial literacy at school age. As this is unfortunately not (yet) anchored in the education system, we started offering workshops ourselves.
In the meantime, we have expanded our target groups and now also have offers for apprentices and young adults, as they have already had their first experiences with their own money and are ready to deal with their own money behavior in certain phases of their lives.
NGOJobs: Wordrap - Three Coins described in three words?
Inspire. Tackle. Change.
NGOJobs: The new year is still young. What is your vision for 2019?
In 2019, we want to increase our impact and further expand existing formats - but because our wheels never stand still, we will also be launching a few new formats at the same time. In particular, we will strengthen our work with apprentices in 2019 and are therefore offering a format that builds and strengthens apprentices' financial skills throughout their apprenticeship.
NGOJobs: Thank you for the interview!
