Press Release by the Ministry for Social Justice and Solidarity, the Family and Children’s Rights and Ministry for Education: Money Monsters – digital game for children about financial awareness

Reference Number: PR211706

A programme of digital games for financial education in an entertaining manner was launched, being supported by a prize-based competition for the best designed concept of education-focused games. The game Money Monsters is the first ‘graduate’ of this programme, and it is the creation of a team made up of three young students, now professional workers – Valerija  Homoljova, Chantelle Saliba  and Sean Powell. This game was launched by the Santa Klara College in San Ġwann.

This team of students had provided a prototype of the game earlier on this year, and this was deemed of such excellent quality that ĠEMMA, within the Ministry for Social Justice and Solidarity, the Family and Children’s Rights, decided to collaborate with the Ministry for Education, so that together they could develop this into a fully fledged resource certified for educational use. 

The game itself, while being entertaining in itself, is also an educational means that helps children to understand the importance of planning throughout their lives, which should begin from an early age. The game thus helps them to learn through an innovative way, in a competent manner as pertaining to their future.

During the launch, Minister for Social Justice and Solidarity, the Family and Children’s Rights, Michael Falzon, praised this initiative and appealed for more initiatives of these types, so that from early ages we would be able to teach children in schools about the importance of financial awareness and capability. He said that this approach to gamification is not just a one time thing. “I would like to remind you that there were already digital game concepts for financial capability by the academic class of third year students in 2019, whereas in May 2020 a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the Permanent Secretary with the University of Malta for five years. This upcoming academic year we will be starting Gamification Season Number 3, with two games from Gamification Season Number 2 currently being converted into protoypes,” stated Minister Michael Falzon. 

Minister for Education, Justyne Caruana, spoke about the importance that we provide skill-based knowledge to our children, also in context of the important reforms that are being carried out across the educational sector. “It is important that we provide education to our children beyond the curriculum, so as to nurture them into becoming good citizens. We must indoctrinate little children with values and a sense of culture, emphasizing upon the importance that they make wise decisions, and teach them the importance of using wisely the resources that they have,” said Minister Caruana. 

She spoke about the project that was presented, and she said that this further demonstrates an important concept, that of displaying learning methodologies in an entertaining manner – a concept which immediately rose to the forefront when the children themselves were consulted on the strategies implemented by the Ministry. “That which they are enjoying today whilst learning in an entertaining manner is going to prove useful to them later on in their lives”, explained Minister Caruana. 

Meanwhile, those who classify in first and second place will be offered the opportunity of a grant to translate the concept itself into a gaming prototype. The idea behind this initiative was to establish a platform for the creation of gamification concepts for financial capability based education, where there was a lack of education-focused digital games. 

ĠEMMA was founded in 2017 to spread further knowledge on retirement and financial capability, at which point in time it established itself as an independent and reliable source of knowledge and information on financial capability, via direct multimedia resources available for the general public and specific sectors of the population. It also gives importance to the basis of education as the primary passage leading to the build up of financial capability skills.