Aim

Turn £15 into £102 with LifeSavers! We want to expand our project, which teaches children about money, to a new school in the North East!

What would you do with £15? 

Spend it? Save it? Invest it? Give it away? 

How would you decide? 

We want you to turn your £15 into £102 saved by a pupil at one of our savings clubs by supporting the LifeSavers project! The average LifeSavers child saves this amount over just one year of taking part in one of our savings clubs.

Just Finance Foundation want to run LifeSavers in a new school in the North East, to support children to have the best financial chance possible. LifeSavers is a unique programme delivered through schools by trained teachers. Our resources are based on key values of thankfulness, wisdom, generosity and justice, and help children to grow their understanding of money in a thoughtful and positive way.

We help schools to deliver financial education and support them to set up an on-site savings club. This encourages kids to save into a real account every week, no matter how small the amount. We train children as savings club cashiers so that they run the club themselves as well as taking part as savers.  

We want the whole community to be involved in the project, so we involve local credit unions, parents and guardians, local leaders and businesses in our method.  

Just £15 turns into £102 of money saved by the average LifeSavers pupil in a single year – an impressive social investment!

Reaching our project target of £3,500 means we can…

• Help 250 children in the North East learn to manage money wisely
• Train 17 teachers and support staff 
• Involve parents and the local community in financial education

What LifeSavers kids say about the project:

"I love being a cashier for our school savings club, it's fun and I get to improve my maths at the same time!" Jason, age 7, Worksop Priory Primary School 

“I used to waste my money, but now I’m trying to be more sensible and save it.. I’m saving for my holiday and I want to treat my younger brother” Sarah, Year 5 pupil Forster Park Primary 

Who we are

The Just Finance Foundation want to change the way children understand and feel about money and finance and empower them to lead change in their own lives. We have a vision for a financially inclusive future where everyone feels like they belong. 

What is LifeSavers?

LifeSavers is a financial education project like no other. We drive change by asking children to think about money using four key values; generosity, justice, wisdom and thankfulness, using five “big questions” relating to the origins, uses and impact of money, how it makes us feel, and how it can be looked after.

How will we do it?

- Training in schools 

During the first year we will recruit schools to take part. We work in areas that need us the most but we include everyone in our method so that nobody is stigmatised. 

We will train all teachers and staff in each school to deliver our programme, then help the school to weave LifeSavers throughout its curriculum. This means that every year, more and more kids benefit from the funding at no extra cost. 

- Savings Clubs

We will then help each school to set up a savings club to encourage children to save every week, no matter how small the amount, helping them to create a saving habit. The clubs are run in partnership with the local credit union who open real accounts for the children to save into. Children will be trained as cashiers enabling them to run the club themselves under supervision, gaining experience of both sides of a financial transaction and having fun at the same time.   

- Involve families and the local community

Bringing the community together is integral to LifeSavers. We support schools to involve local leaders from faith groups, local business and celebrities in the delivery of our assembly resources and promotion of the project. For example, we would be delighted for Aviva staff to give a talk at our schools on the topic of insurance. 

Why is it needed?

The way that children experience the world is completely different. They are bombarded with personalised advertising through phones, in the street and through the TV. This means they are constantly encouraged to want things they don’t need.  Primary school is an important time when habits to start to form. Despite this, children don’t start learning about money until age 11. We want to give kids the skills they need to navigate this by focusing on what's really important in life and encouraging healthy habits to form.

Why the North East - and our impact so far

We have delivered LifeSavers to 18 schools in the North East supporting 5,700 children and training 300 teachers in the last 3 years.  

We want to increase our project in the North East due to high levels of personal debt and insolvencies in the region. Two fifths of North East adults worry about their personal debt, citing credit cards, mortgage repayments and overdrafts as the biggest causes of stress. 42% of North East adults struggle to make it to pay day and many turn to pay day lenders and illegal loan sharks to make ends meet. 

In three years, we have delivered LifeSavers in 120 schools, helping 30,700 children and training 2,114 teachers and staff. Collectively, children have saved £175,000 in our savings clubs. You can read our latest independent impact report here. 

This project successfully funded on 15th July 2020