A different kind of educational collaboration

EFI’s partner in Ukraine, Bendukidze Free Market Center, works with teachers across the country to help improve the ways in which economics is taught. This summer, invited by the Poltava Business Association to help develop the economic thinking of the region’s teenagers and their parents, BFMC ran a three-day Economic Education Accelerator for 150 teachers. Most of them had no previous experience of teaching economics.

The training focused on immersive learning, teaching basic principles of economics, as well as tools and resources that help turn everyday economics into a common sense experience! Together with EFI, BFMC works to put the fun into learning – and teaching - economics!

From September, these teachers will lead economics classes for 8th and 9th grade students, using EFI’s translated edition of “Common Sense Economics” and our Teacher Toolkit. We look forward to seeing how this evolves!

Commenting on the project, a spokesman from Poltava Business Association said: “This is our joint investment in the development of society for tens and hundreds of years. The project Economic education in Poltava region is the first example of educational collaboration of socially responsible business, proactive public organizations and local authorities”.

The final words go to Nataliya Melnyk at BFMC: “With each new group of teachers who join our trainings, we promote and transform economic education in Ukraine. Together with them, we make economics as a school subject come to life for schoolchildren, so that lessons are not some uninteresting letters on paper, but a real experience for kids, that will prepare them for a successful adult life. Because our whole life is economics”.