Queen Máxima of the Netherlands and Minister Carola Schouten have paid a working visit to Sportcampus Zuiderpark to promote Schuldenlab070, a platform designed to help young people in debt.
The visit on Wednesday, 9 February, is a follow-up from the conversation the Queen and the Minister had on 25 January, during which Minister Schouten had expressed her wish for the new Prime Minister Rutte government to make the platform a part of their plan to comprehensively tackle the issues of poverty and debt.
During the Wednesday visit, Her Majesty chatted with students that have benefitted form the platform but also with the social workers and administrators that the students have been put in contact with.
Schuldenlab070 is an action platform aimed at tackling “the poverty and debt problem in The Hague with innovative solutions and public-private partnerships”, according to the Royal House of the Netherlands’ website. The platform was developed by SchuldenlabNL, an organisation of which Queen Máxima is honorary president, and released in 2016.
Her Majesty praised the comprehensive approach that the platform has in tackling the issue; she remarked about the many times she heard from young people about how their debt situation also affected their mental health, since it brought on a lack of stability and certainty.
The Queen said: “That combination of financial problems and mental problems and also that stability: not knowing that you have a safe space to live in; that vicious circle really affects me a lot.”
According to data from October 2020, more than 22,000 households in the Netherlands are affected by debt-induced poverty, and the number is widely believed to have increased due to the instability brought on by the global health emergency over the past two years.
With her background in finance and innovative credit solutions, Queen Máxima has long been passionate about educating people from a very young age to talking about finance and managing money responsibly.
