Cha-Ching Digital Strategy

Challenge

Financial literacy is critical to many of life’s milestones: going to college (student loans), getting a job (saving and spending), getting married (budgeting for a wedding), buying a house (mortgages), and retiring (investments). Yet students across the globe are still lacking basic financial skills. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD’s) 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that one in four 15 year-olds are unable to make even simple decisions on everyday spending.

The Hong Kong-based Prudence Foundation has funded EDC to develop a digital strategy for adapting their Cha-Ching financial literacy program for online learning. Cha-Ching offers a series of music videos and an activity-based classroom curriculum to help children in Asia learn about the fundamental concepts of earning, saving, spending, and donating.

Key Activities

The project is carrying out the following activities:

Conduct an analysis of existing Cha-Ching media and related formal and informal instructional materials
Create a prototype design of a Web-based application, and test it with a small number of children and parents in the United States, Africa, and Asia
Develop a strategy for creating an online learning game that targets children ages 8–10 in playful exploration of core Cha-Ching financial literacy topics
Conduct an efficacy study in the Philippines on a pre-release version of the game

Impact

When complete, the Cha-Ching learning game will be available for free in 10 countries across Asia and Africa and will be playable on many mobile devices.