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 carried out the following activities:

Conducted an analysis of existing Cha-Ching media and related formal and informal instructional materials
Created a prototype design of a Web-based application, and tested it with children and parents in the United States, Africa, and Asia
Developed a strategy for creating an online learning game that targets children ages 8–10 in playful exploration of core Cha-Ching financial literacy topics
Consulted on instructional design in collaboration with Prudence Foundation and game developers Two Bulls
Conducted a home-based efficacy study with 293 children in the Philippines on a pre-release version of the game

Impact

EDC’s evaluation found that after two weeks of playing the game, children in the study group scored higher on a financial literacy assessment, while children in the control group showed no such improvement. Further, children who completed all four modules, repeated at least one module, and spent more than 90 minutes playing the game showed even greater learning gains compared to the control group.
The Cha-Ching Money Adventures digital learning game launched globally in September 2022. It is available for free and can be played on many mobile devices.