On the occasion of our national holiday on the 15^th of March, Tamás Sulyok, the President of the Republic, awarded the Hungarian Cross of Merit in recognition for the high quality professional work in the field of financial education, especially in the development of financial awareness, and for the work in developing thematic teaching materials for the development of financial and management awareness among students, to Eszter Hergár, the Director for Social Relations of the Central Bank of Hungary, the Head of the Money Museum, and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Money Compass Foundation and Ágnes Sütő, the Deputy Secretary General of the Hungarian Banking Association, the Vice President of the Hungarian Marketing Association, and a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Pénziránytű Foundation.

The Money Compass Foundation and the Hungarian Banking Association organise emblematic financial education programmes such as the 10th annual PÉNZ7 (Money Week) financial and entrepreneurial theme week.

The programme has grown to become the largest financial literacy initiative in the world in terms of population, reaching one and a half million students over a decade of work, providing them with basic financial and entrepreneurial knowledge and practical experience. In 2024, more than 200,000 students in 1,270 schools were taught at least one lesson on finance. Alongside teachers, nearly 5,000 finance professionals volunteered to help run the sessions in schools, with 650 experts taking part this year.

The Money Compass Foundation has been developing and implementing financial awareness programmes in cooperation with NGOs and market players since 2008. Its founders are the Central Bank of Hungary, the Hungarian Banking Association, and the Student Loan Centre. The Foundation has set up several programmes to promote financial and economic education in public education. Through the work of the Foundation, 700,000 textbooks and workbooks have been produced to help primary and secondary school pupils learn about finance. The Foundation also runs a network of primary and secondary schools and organises teacher training programmes. It aims to strengthen students' financial (self-)knowledge through educational programmes, interactive online quizzes, and competitions.

The two honourees have worked as catalysts for the development of financial culture in recent years, and thanks to their activities, Hungarian achievements have been recognised internationally. Eszter Hergár, as the Director of the Money Museum, has contributed to more than 200,000 visitors learning about the history of Hungarian and international money circulation and the interesting aspects of modern money management over the past 2 years. Ágnes Sütő, as a member of the organising committee of the European Money Week in Brussels, is working to promote the results of the development of financial culture in Hungary in a pan-European context.