Financial literacy

REAL School
3 days ago
2 min read

11 December 2025

Students learned about money by creating their own currency, practising budgeting skills, and running real businesses that generated revenue streams for their own non-profit school. The project was guided by a clear driving question:

How can we turn a passion or an idea into a sustainable revenue stream?

Older students designed their own currency and lived the experiment to learn how money flows through a business, how to make values-based decisions, and how to communicate with stakeholders. They experimented, took risks, reflected on failures, and practised turning ideas into real-world impact.

Real people

The students worked with several educators and community partners, including:

The school catalysts, who gave feedback on their revenue stream ideas, coached them on pricing, marketing, and presenting to an audience.
Peter Jones, an entrepreneur who taught students his stock market board game. Through which students experience risk, diversification, and decision-making in an accessible way.

Parents, who were invited to act as the “board” during the quarterly earnings report, asked tough questions and responded to students’ pitches.
The Planteen, which offered a real context for thinking about running a social, sustainable food business in the school community.
Workers from companies in Graphisoft Park, who became customers at the Christmas Fair, were buying students’ products and giving authentic feedback through their choices and conversations.

Real places

To ground their financial learning in reality, students visited businesses and public spaces where money, value, and waste are constantly in play. Over the term, they:

Visited the Hungarian Money Museum, exploring how money systems work and how financial decisions shape everyday life.
Spent time at a Repair Café in the 8th district, seeing how repair, reuse, and community exchange can offer alternatives to a throwaway economy.

Visited Fény utcai Market (Fény utcai piac) and local supermarkets such as Spar in Mammut and Auchan, analysing prices, food quality, packaging, and consumer goods waste.
Set up stalls at the Graphisoft Park Christmas fair, where they sold their products to workers from neighbouring companies and experienced what it feels like to trade with real customers.