Inter-institutional cooperation and migrants' financial education: An Italian case study

Abstract

This study examines the Welcome-ED project—a partnership between the Municipality of Turin and the Turin Museum of Savings (MoS)—designed to provide tailored financial education to diverse migrant groups through cooperation with local entities, including cooperatives, non-profit associations, and provincial centers for adult education. By analyzing the project’s implementation, we identify its strengths and critical areas for improvement, offering actionable recommendations to guide the design of future financial education programs for migrants at the local level. The program’s use of multimodal, interactive teaching methods is a valuable aspect of this initiative, as it contributed to increasing participant engagement and delivering accessible content. Our analysis demonstrates that evaluation criteria should account for varying levels of topic difficulty, supported by insights from Item Response Theory (IRT). Migrants involved through cooperatives and non-profits exhibited the greatest knowledge gains, emphasizing the importance of context-specific approaches tailored to participants’ diverse needs—a goal achievable through effective inter-institutional cooperation and co-creation.