Abstract:

Informal education plays an important role for any state to train specialists, especially in the social sphere related to meeting the needs of society in quality health care, benefits and social services. Therefore, it is important for the state economy to train specialists with such competences as the ability to prepare financial and economic substantiation of the activities of social sphere organisations, the ability to analyse and assess the risks of social sphere enterprises and develop measures to reduce them. It is also necessary to understand the tools of social policy implementation, to know the basics of entrepreneurship in the social economy, to understand the elements of social marketing and to possess the tools of big data creation, which can help in reports on economic trends in social finance. The issue of crowdfunding, which is increasingly used in social projects, is also becoming relevant.

West Kazakhstan Innovative Technological University (WKITU) is engaged in training specialists in this sector - there are modules on social finance for students of the faculties of economics, management and accounting and audit. In our opinion, in this subject theory alone is not enough - many assignments are of a practical nature, as they involve communication, visits to various organisations, and some projects - for example, crowdfunding - cannot be studied without practical work with digital platforms.

In this regard, the university is introducing a format of interactive classes based on real social organisations - among others. In 2023, the university held three events in a nursing home, and 32 students from the Faculty of Economics, 18 students from the Faculty of Management and 17 students from the Faculty of Accounting and Auditing took part in organising these events. They got acquainted with the organisation's departments responsible for budgetary activities, studied the nursing home ecosystem and the range of social services, worked with volunteers and explored crowdfunding platforms to collect gifts. Interactive sessions helped to touch upon the ethical side of the issue - students learnt in practice what words should not be used towards elderly people in social marketing projects. This experience, in our opinion, may be of interest not only to Kazakhstan, so we believe this article is useful for teachers implementing informal education programmes.

Keywords:

Education, learning, economics, social finance, nursing home.