Global Money Week is an annual international financial awareness campaign designed to encourage children and young people to think about money, budgets and their livelihoods. SIX and the Swiss Finance Museum supported the initiative for the first time this year and sent around 60 students on a six-week rally.
The task was to create a budget for a school camp with minimum impact on the climate, and thus not in Swiss francs, but in climate points! Four weeks, including travel to and from, with room and board as well as a leisure program – everything for 100 climate points per student per day.
As a result, the task was related both to the students’ curriculum on economy, budget and sustainable development, but also with the way in which SIX understands corporate responsibility. As part of this topic, SIX promotes financial education in the society and is committed to handle natural resources in a responsible manner.
Projects of Students
Young people could find hints for budgeting of their climate point consumption or climate intensity of their planned summer camp on the website “A better day the 100 way”.
So they went by Flixbus to Nice or cycled to the Pfäffiker lake. For swimming and hiking to Ticino, or for geocoaching with dogs to the nearby forest.
There were vegetables from the garden, breakfast without dairy, and endless pasta.
All participating classes calculated the climate intensity of their activities – and stayed within a budget!
Winners
The class 18c of the Milchbuck school in Zurich won the first place. In a detailed presentation, these young people considered even the CO2 emission intensity of their torch hike and deducted a fixed amount of climate points for their own clothes.
The teams from the Zurich-Hirslanden school at secondary level won the second and third place. One team cleverly calculated the average climate point consumption per person and this way compensated the increased consumption of meat eaters with a better carbon footprint of vegetarians.
The other team planned some leisure with dogs, presented their idea in a lovely video and did not forget to budget the food for the animals too.
To conclude, we do not necessarily have to charge our (climate) account with our leisure activities − all we need is good ideas to make progress! After such an intensive rally, the winning classes will surely know how to use their awards of CHF 2000 and CHF 1500.