Ten students from eight Secondary Education and Baccalaureate high schools from Almeria, Cordoba, Granada, Malaga, Salamanca, Sevilla and Valladolid have participated today in the final of the 12th Financial Olympics of the Edufinet Project, promoted by Unicaja Banco and Fundación Unicaja. Due to the situation caused by the coronavirus crisis, the event has been held online.
The 10 finalists of the 12th Financial Olympics, a competition which reached nearly 1,050 initial registrations, have presented today before the jury the conclusions of their projects. The winners have been Beatriz García, from IES Severo Ochoa (Granada), in first place; Jésica Modroño, from IES Alejandría (Tordesillas, Valladolid), second, and María Denis, from IES Severo Ochoa (Granada) too, in third place.
Three special awards have also been granted to Iván Fernández, from IES Fernando de los Ríos (Malaga); Judith Fraile, from Colegio Esclavas del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús (Salamanca), and Marta Fernández, from IES Padre Manjón (Granada).
As for prizes, the first classified has received a 64GB iPhone XR, the second one, a 32 GB iPad and the third one, an Apple Watch Series 3. The winning high schools and teachers have also been awarded.
The first part of the Financial Olympics has been developed online, through a practical case hosted in a platform in a videogame-simulation format. The students had to make investment and funding decisions depending on the information that they had and on random and changing economic and personal events. Of the nearly 1,050 initially registered students –from Andalucia, Castilla y Leon, Castilla-La Mancha, Cataluña and Madrid schools-, more than 170 completed their participation.
Jury
The jury which has determined the winners has been composed by the Head of the Edufinet Project and General Director of General and Technical Secretariat at Unicaja Banco, José M. Domínguez; the General Manager of Fundación Unicaja, Sergio Corral; the Head of CSR at Unicaja Banco, José María López; Carolina Elipe, from CECA Sustainability Department, María Concepción Ortega, representing the Andalusian government Education and Sports Department in Malaga, and the Quality, Assessment and Educational Programmes Chief of Service of Junta de Castilla y León, Clara Sancho.
And, representing the universities which collaborate with Edufinet, the Dean of the School of Economics and Business Science at the University of Malaga (UMA), Eugenio Luque; Francisca García, lecturer at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED); the Head of the Secretariat for Students Employability and Entrepreneurship at the University of Jaen (UJA), Raúl Mata; the Dean of the School of Business Science and Tourism at the University of Huelva (UHU), Juan José de la Vega; Ignacio Sánchez, lecturer at Master’s in Economic Analysis of Law and Public Policies at the University of Salamanca (USAL); Fernando Tejerina, lecturer at the Department of Financial Economics and Accounting at the University of Valladolid (UVa), and the Vice Chancellor for Research and Educational Innovation of the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca (UPSA), Pedro Sangro.
In general, the jury has recognized the results of the 12th Financial Olympics and has remarked the high participation, congratulating the young participants.
The 12th Financial Olympics are a supplement to the 12th Conferences on Financial Education for Young People, which registered a participation of nearly 7,000 secondary and Baccalaureate education from 30 provinces from regions such as Andalucia, Castilla y Leon, Castilla-La Mancha, Madrid, Extremadura, Aragon, Canary Islands, Cantabria, Cataluña, Comunidad Valenciana, Galicia, Balearic Islands, La Rioja, Navarra, Principado de Asturias and Región de Murcia.
15 years of the Edufinet Project
The Edufinet Project was launched at the end of 2007, although its development began in 2005, within Unicaja, with the collaboration of the International University of Andalusia (Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, UNIA) and the UMA. This way, it became of the pioneering institutions in Spain in launched an initiative of this kind.
With over 15 years of history, currently more than ten institutions and business organizations and 16 universities collaborate with this project. All of the above have made Unicaja, one of the pioneering institutions in Spain in launching an initiative of this kind, to be one of the most active agents in the fields of financial education and inclusion, in the exercise of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and of its commitment to society, both from Unicaja Banco and Fundación Unicaja.
As for its website (https://www.edufinet.com/), it has received more than nine million visits, from nearly 180 countries. It also features to portals with specific contents: one for young people (Edufinext) and one for business owners and entrepreneurs (Edufiemp).
