"Evidence suggests that many adults are unaware of how their individual consumer attitude can possibly have impact in the economy, the environment and society and are also inadequately prepared to participate effectively in the market place. Having said that, consumer literacy is an important skill that all European citizens should develop in an early age, therefore consumers’ literacy in European schools is necessary in order to enable youngsters to make informed economic decisions in the future. Including economic and consumer education in the official school curriculum is considered one of the most efficient and fair ways to reach a whole generation, as it introduces concepts of money and ways to manage it well, while promoting wise spending and rational consumer behavior. Economic and consumer education can take place as a standalone subject or it can be included in specific subjects (i.e. mathematics, economics or social sciences, citizenship). Its inclusion through a crosscurricular approach can allow for the development of more diverse and potentially innovative and engaging ways to link economic and consumer literacy to more familiar topics for both students and teachers.One of today’s challenges is also the fact that young people tend to allow their “mood” to ultimately control their spending patterns, resulting in impulse buying, regardless of formal budgeting or plans. There is the identified need to urge young people, and more specifically students, as the ECOLES project will be implemented in the school setting, to consider the impact of choices on the well-being of others, as they lack critical awareness and understanding of concepts of social, or/and even ecological responsibility. Furthermore, in schools where consumer education is being taught as a secondary component of various disciplines, teachers often are either not concerned or do not have the capacity to teach consumer concepts closely related to their root discipline or presenting real life scenarios effectively to foster better understanding of the concepts in their students.The ECOLES project aims to contribute to the following European development strategies: Europe 2020 Strategy: Target 4 – Education and Target 5 – Fighting poverty and social exclusion, while raising awareness within the school setting on the risks of poor personal financial management and irrational consumer behavior. In addition it aims to contribute in achieving the ET 2020´s strategic objective 2 – Improving the quality and efficiency of education and training.The innovation of the project lies in the fact that that it provides useful and easy to use tools for students and trainers/teachers so as to be able to improve knowledge on economic and consumer related issues combine the ""game"" experience with a set of proposed exercises and approaches for enhanced results. The educational material will also target a new age group 7-18 year old pupils for which such material is not yet widely available. Also, the ECOLES virtual consumer manager will provide a challenging and entertaining learning environment that enables a self-guided learning process.The project activities foreseen in the project follow a simple logic and a coherent project management structure. In particular, the project begins with a comprehensive conceptualization and definition of the project framework. A ""State of Art on economic and consumer literacy level of knowledge of students” will be conducted in each partner country, involving the main target groups i.e. pupils 7-18 year old, school teachers, school leaders, trainers in consumer issues. This activity leads to the production of IO1. The partners will then focus on the development of educational material for students and guidelines for trainers constituting the content of the game for improving the economic and consumer literacy knowledge in European schools (IO2). Furthermore, the partnership will also develop a virtual consumer manager game (IO3) with various scenarios and different levels which will test the theoretical knowledge acquired. IO3 will be designed to be used as a form of a ""game"" even without prior training. The development of IO2 and IO3 will be grouped into three activities a) Design and Development, b) Piloting and testing and c) finalization. These outputs will also be available through the ECOLES website. In parallel with the aforementioned activities which are directly related to the intellectual outputs foreseen, the partners will implement horizontal activities, which will ensure the smooth project implementation, quality assurance and target group outreach. These are: 1. Project Management; 2. Quality Assurance and evaluation; 3. Dissemination and Exploitation."