Kashio

Inspiration 💡

Financial habits, attitudes, and confidence around money begin forming from a young age. Research from Cambridge University suggests that many money habits are largely developed by the age of 7. A 2023 survey by TD Bank Group found that Canadian parents are concerned about their children's financial future, with 89% agreeing they would feel more confident if their child had improved financial knowledge before their teenage years.

At ages 7-12, kids are developing lifelong money habits and are highly motivated by creativity and ownership. This is an ideal time to introduce concepts like saving, spending, and money management. Despite this critical learning stage, many kids still lack access to engaging and practical financial education. Existing resources rely heavily on abstract examples that don't resonate with kids.

Through conversations with mentors experienced in youth education, we understood that children learn best when they are active participants who can make choices and have the ability to progress at their own pace. This inspired us to create Kashio: a game-based learning experience where kids are taught financial literacy by running a business, making decisions, and learning from outcomes in a fun, safe, and low-pressure environment.

What it does 🪙

Kashio is a financial literacy game designed for children ages 7-12 that teaches money management through entrepreneurship. Players create a customizable character and choose small businesses to run, such as a cafe, clothing store, or pet shop. Through gameplay, kids learn core financial concepts like saving, spending, budgeting, loans, and interest by making real decisions and seeing their outcomes.

Players earn in-game currency by serving customers and managing their businesses. To keep learning engaging, Kashio includes fast-paced racing mini-games where financial literacy questions appear during the game. Correct answers provide boosts and rewards, reinforcing learning in a fun, low-pressure way.

Kashio is designed to be safe, inclusive, and age-appropriate, with adjustable difficulty levels, no strict time limits, and accessibility features such as text-to-speech and language translation. By combining creativity, choice, and play, Kashio helps kids build confidence and practical money skills that can support them throughout their lives.

How we built it 👩‍💻

Tech stack:
TypeScript, React, Vite, Tailwind CSS, Node.js

APIs/Integrations:
Elevenlabs API, Google Translate API

Design/Images:
Figma, Canva, Google AI Studio

Challenges we ran into 🔏

A major challenge we faced was making Kashio both interactive and accessible. To make the game feel even more interactive, we integrated the ElevenLabs API for AI-driven text-to-speech. The tricky part was ensuring the audio synced with the fast-paced mini game without slowing it down.

At the same time, we wanted Kashio to be inclusive for kids who speak different languages. This meant integrating the Google Translate API so all in-game text and AI-generated audio could be translated in real-time. Balancing multiple languages, audio, and game timing required a lot of testing and iteration.

This challenge taught us a lot about real-time AI integration and accessibility, ensuring that every player could enjoy and learn from the game regardless of language or reading level.

Accomplishments that we're proud of ⭐

Seamless integration of text-to-speech and multi-language support.
Prioritizing accessibility and inclusivity to make the game enjoyable for all kids.
Creating a system where kids learn by doing instead of memorizing abstract concepts.

What we learned📒

How to integrate the Elevenlabs API for text-to-speech and multi-language translation.
How to plan and design a game with multiple interactive features.
How to build an inclusive educational tool for kids and enhance usability.

What's next for Kashio 🌠

We plan to make Kashio even more engaging and interactive by introducing features that allow friends to visit each other's businesses. Players could explore their friends' shops, make purchases, and compete in the mini-challenges, creating a social and cooperative learning experience. To ensure safety, we would research private servers and implement parental controls so kids can play in a secure environment.

We also aim to expand accessibility by adding more language translations and creating customized learning curriculums based on each player's performance in game quizzes. This would allow kids to learn at their own pace while focusing on topics they find challenging.

Finally, we plan to enhance the dashboard to track financial literacy progress, giving parents the ability to monitor their child's learning journey. By combining social interaction, personalized learning, and measurable progress, Kashio can become an even more effective and fun tool for teaching children about money.