Ten students from nine Secondary Education and Baccalaureate high schools from Granada, Huelva, Sevilla, Valladolid and Ciudad Real have participated today in the final of the 11th 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 11th Financial Olympics, a competition which reached 1,200 initial registrations, have presented today before the jury the conclusions of their projects. The winners have been Raúl Milán, from IES Alejandría in Tordesillas (Valladolid), in the first place, Julia Balbuena, from IES Isbilya in Sevilla, second, and Víctor García, from IES Severo Ochoa in Granada, in third place.
Seven special awards have been granted to Ángel Avilés and Carlos Zarzuela, from IES Padre Manjón in Granada; Martina Vázquez, from IES Puerta de Andalucía in Santa Olalla del Cala (Huelva); Daniel López and Francisco García, from IES Ítaca in Sevilla; Olga Pérez, from IES Chaves Nogales in Sevilla, and Elvira Aparicio, from IES Santa María de Alarcos in Ciudad Real.
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 –as it was in the previous edition-, 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 1,200 initially registered students –from Almeria, Cadiz, Cordoba, Huelva, Granada, Jaen, Malaga, Sevilla, Valladolid and Ciudad Real, nearly 210 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; the Coordinator of the Edufinet working team in Castilla y Leon, Javier Fernández; the Head of Sustainability and Stakeholders Relations at CECA, Juan Carlos López, and Luis Sánchez, teaching technical advisor at the Provincial Directorate of Education in Salamanca of the Junta de Castilla y León.
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) and UMA; the Head of Enterpreneurship at the University of Granada (UGR), María del Mar Fuentes; Francisco Aguado, lecturer at the University of Huelva (UHU); the Head of the Secretariat for Students Employability and Entrepreneurship at the University of Jaen (UJA), Raúl Mata, and José Ignacio Sánchez, lecturer at the University of Salamanca (USAL).
In general, the jury has recognized the results of the 11th Financial Olympics and has remarked the high participation, congratulating the young participants.
The 11th Financial Olympics are a supplement to the 11th Conferences on Financial Education for Young People, which ended this year edition on 6 March, two weeks before the initial schedule due to the situation caused by the coronavirus outbreak, and which registered a participation of nearly 17,000 students from a total of 268 high schools from several Spanish provinces, mainly Andalusia, Castilla y Leon, Castilla-La Mancha and Melilla.
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, a work recognized with several awards.
Since it was launched, more than 152,000 people have participated in the different workshops, conferences, seminars or courses organized by the Edufinet Project, of which more than 108,000 have attended the Conferences on Financial Education for Young People. More than ten institutions and business organizations and 16 universities participate in this project.
