Children Education Foundation (CHEF)

Home Page
The Game Page
The bottom of the game page
Other Resources Page
Other Resources Page(continued)
Other Resources Page(continued)
Other Resources Page(continued)
The About Us tab ( the pictures are programmed with a carousel effect so that they change when you press the arrow)
The About Us tab(continued)
The About Us tab(continued)
The Mentorship Forum

Inspiration

California’s central valley is responsible for producing 1/3 of the nation’s vegetables and nearly 2/3 of the nation’s fruits and nuts, namely 90% of the nation’s strawberries. However, although over half a million farmworkers serve in this production process, they remain powerless and are exploited, paid unfair wages and provided shabby accommodations due to their undocumented status. Additionally, it is legal for children to work in the fields starting from when they are only 12 years old and thus farmworkers’ children are forced to work several hours a day to help make ends meet. This valuable time that they spend in the fields is cut from their time to develop and grow as students and because of constantly bending down to pick strawberries, the kids develop spinal cord and brain defects causing their IQs to go drastically down. In addition, because these families are forced to live a migrant lifestyle, having to move when strawberry picking season is over and to come back when it is time again, kids schooling is disrupted and thus even though many of these kids have the option to continue schooling, they continually fall behind, are not motivated enough to stay in school and soon drop out to continue to help on the fields. We created this game with these children in mind so that we can inspire them to continue learning and improving education.

We wanted to directly impact the farmworkers’ children and help foster a solid academic foundation for them. Farmworker families are indirectly impacted because their children are able to get a better job and thus, increase the family’s financial status. Moreover, children who are introduced to basic education can inspire generations to come. Farming is indirectly impacted by our project because we are giving their children the foundations to innovate new farming solutions. Additionally, the economy will get indirectly impacted because we will be bringing kids who may have never thought it was possible to get an education, into schooling.

What it does

We created a site and a game for farm working children to have access to. The game we created currently helps exercise the skill of addition. Included on the site are resources to further their education and gain connections in the outside world. We added a mentorship forum so that the children could know they have someone to turn to if things get out of control. Our math game is interactive and educational. We have different difficulty levels which allows users to learn step by step and develop their math skills.

How we built it

We used HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create the website. One of the tabs on the site is a math game. For the game, we used Python and Pygame, a set of Python modules used to create video games. In order to work efficiently, we split up the work and assigned tasks.

Challenges we ran into

When constructing the game, we had a difficult time inputting and outputting text onto a display screen. Also, since most of us have not used Python and Pygame before, we were having trouble with loops and implementing Pygame. The executing process of Pygame is different from C++, so at first, the messages we tried to display would not stay on the screen. We spent a lot of time fixing that problem. For the website, we had a difficult time making the buttons work when using JavaScript, and we had to change the website layout multiple times because the website page looks different on each UI.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We created a mini-game that teaches kids how to do simple addition. As points are earned, the score will increase. We also created a website that is easy to read and use. This was most of our group’s first hackathon. Thus, we are proud of what we accomplished in the time given. We had a lot of fun, and we hope that our project can be used and improved in the future.

What we learned

As many of us have not experienced the environment of a hackathon. We learned how to multitask under pressure and collaborate as a team. We learned how to create a website using html, css, javascript, which are languages that most of us have never experienced.We also learned how to use pygame to implement our game concept.

What's next for Children Education Foundation (CHEF)

We want to be able to attach the game on the website itself. We would also like to expand on the math game, by not only having addition, but also subtraction, multiplication, division, and more skills. Lastly, we would like to further incentivize this project with sponsorships/funding from partner companies. We would like to use this funding to allot money for the children’s college and university in the future. As a result, we hope that this further inspires the children to achieve higher education.