First-Ever Winner From China Reflects Growing Reach - With Entries From Record 47 Countries. Winners From Portugal to Philippines, Australia to UK and USA
SINGAPORE, May 29, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Following extensive deliberations by an international panel of expert judges, the MAIAs are proud to announce the winners, runners-up, and special commendations for this year’s Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards.
Said the MAIAs co-founder Michael Gilmore, “With a record number of entries from an incredible 47 countries this year, up from 35 last year, it’s clear that financial literacy is gaining attention as a vital global issue. We saw winning entries from Spain to Singapore, from China and India through to the UK and the USA, underscoring how universal the challenge of money awareness is - and how many brilliant solutions are emerging across the world.”
Non-profit projects for school-aged children were fiercely contested, with the most entries the awards have ever seen in one category. Afutong Guardians of Mountain Children won out - the MAIAs' first-ever winner from China. Afutong has reached more than 300,000 children, a remarkable achievement.
The awards had only one double winner this year: Multiply by Creador Foundation, which won both the Non-Profit Project in a Developing Country category and the Closing the Gender Gap category for its work with women in India.
The Economist Educational Foundation was the winner of another very tight category, Best Content, with its Topical Talk program narrowly beating out Kilkenomics, the world's only festival of economics and stand-up comedy. Said MAIAs co-founder Trudi Harris: "This highlights the incredible range of solutions we are finding to help people understand money better. Even within a single category, the ideas and innovation are just awe-inspiring."
Other standout winners include:
- The Best Book category has been a close contest in the past, with tied winners the last two years, but this year The Money Pizza by Fleur Iannazzo emerged as the clear winner.
- Danny Jang, a student from Bergen County Technical High School, Teterboro, New Jersey, won the Best Educator award
- Uplifters Limited, based in Hong Kong, teaches foreign domestic workers there, predominantly from the Philippines and Indonesia, how to make better money choices, and to be confident with those choices.
- Best Academic Paper this year was won by Saumitra Jha of Stanford University for Trading Stocks Builds Confidence and Compresses the Gender Gap, which showed how encouraging women to trade stocks, without providing educational content, can improve their confidence and understanding of finance.
"This is pretty revolutionary, to say you can teach financial literacy without teaching financial literacy" said Michael Gilmore, "but we need just these kinds of innovations if we are to reach everyone, everywhere. Not everyone is in school, or wants to study about money, and many people learn better through practice than theory."
The For-Profit Categories were an Aussie party this year, with three of four category winners coming from Down Under. Financial Literacy Australia won Best Fintech, Capabilite.com won Best Adult Education and the Mandy Money High School program won Best For-Profit School-Age Education.
"Australia has been punching above its weight at the MAIAs for some time now, but this may be its strongest showing yet," said Trudi Harris. "We'd love to see these kinds of efforts copied all over the world," she added.
The one For-Profit winner not from Australia was Nickel, from Spain, a program that enables small businesses in areas underserved by banks to become a new centre for the cash economy. This Spanish winner was joined by the MAIAs' first winner from Portugal, Finance for All, by the Nova School of Business, which has established randomised controlled trials of their projects to test effectiveness.
In addition to Multiply by Creador Foundation’s award for Closing the Gender Gap, two more projects won in the MAIAs’ Special Categories:
- Venture Valley for Entrepreneurship Education
- Whitebyte for the newly introduced Anti-Scam category, reflecting the rise in scams and fraud, and the importance of financial protection
No winners were announced for the Green Financial Literacy or Blockchain categories.
"The calibre of entries this year has again been inspirational," said Gilmore. "On behalf of the MAIAs and our judges, we would like to extend heartfelt congratulations to all awardees for their creativity, dedication, and impact."
Please visit maiawards.org to view the complete list of 2025 award recipients.
Michael Gilmore
The Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards
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