Completed
Tilli's Digital Safety Magic Box | Playful learning for kids and caregivers
7
by Kavindya Thennakoon
Co-Founder
Tilli
Submission Date
November 01, 2022
OVERVIEW
For the past decade children and teens have entered the complex and at times dangerous digital world with absolutely no learning or support on navigating it. Tilli is a play-based, social-emotional learning tool that brings together the joys of play and the power of behavioral science to help kids (alongside their caregivers and teachers) build foundational, lifelong skills and mindsets to be safe, confident, and happy within the digital spaces they occupy.
Problem: 1 in every 2 children has encountered cyberbullying. 1 in 3 children have experienced cyber threats like phishing or hacking. The post-covid world has exponentially increased the number of kids and teens online but has also left them terribly unhappy. We’re in the midst of one of the worst mental health crises of our time with 1 in every 7 kids reporting feeling depressed. Today’s 5-year-olds will become tomorrow’s digital creators and consumers. 
We want to start as early as possible and here’s why.
Our thesis is very simple: 90% of a human’s brain development has already happened by the time they hit their 10th birthday. Many of the mental models around digital safety and well-being are grounded in social-emotional learning and concepts like self-awareness, trust, boundaries, and consent. Attempting to ‘teach’ these skills later on in a child’s life is tough. Our aim is to focus on 5-10-year-olds and to leverage behavioral sciences and research-based approaches like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help kids build lifelong behaviors and coping strategies around topics like feelings, trust, boundaries, consent, authenticity, and privacy.
How does Tilli work?
Tilli is designed as a 'phygital' experience - a play-based learning kit that is accompanied by a game-based web app for caregivers and teachers to play alongside their kids. The learning experience comprises of 3 evidence-based modules that cover the foundational skills, habits, and mindsets needed for a child to thrive as a digital citizen; whether they're just consuming content or creating.
PURPOSE
Our mission is to help every child have all the skills, tools, and mindsets they need to thrive as a digital citizen by their 10th birthday. These are the 4 beliefs that drive our purpose:
- Starting early: the impact of tackling tough topics like consent and safety as early as the age of 5 is exponential as the likelihood of learning turning into behaviors and behaviors into lifelong habits is much higher when we start young.
- Building a more loving, trusting, and meaningful relationship between kids and their caregivers. Most kids, teens, and parents navigate the digital world alone. Children are left with no support or a trusted adult to turn to when faced with unpleasant, dangerous, or risky online experiences since many of them don’t have a shared vocabulary with their parents and caregivers about the digital world. 85% of adults who completed Tilli's module on trust stated that they had a more honest and meaningful conversation with their kids (many for the first time!)
- Our lived experiences growing up in South Asia: Tilli was co-founded by myself (Kavi) and Vidya - we both experienced long-time repercussions of facing situations of unsafety early on in our lives. I built Tilli for my own 8-year-old self, informed by my own life experiences around consent and boundaries.
- The need to see our stories, languages, and lived realities in the learning experiences we consume: We're committed to bridging the lack of learning experiences that are equitable, relevant, and accessible to communities like mine, which were often left out in popular learning media, especially around digital well-being. Each learning experience is co-created by local educators, parents, kids, and local language experts because "anything about us, without us, is against us"
QUESTIONS
Colombo/Deraniyagala, Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
5 million kids, equipped with all foundational skills, mindsets, and behaviors they need to be safe, confident and happy in the digital world, by their 10th Birthday
Our aim is to make Tilli's safety toolbox accessible to 5 million kids in South Asia by 2030. How do we get there?
- Tilli is designed to come in the form of a physical learning kit that can be used in both homes and classrooms and also a digital web application that can be accessed in low-internet environments.
- Our intention is to accompany the physical learning kit with a Whatsapp Assistant that can guide caregivers through the learning journey while sharing customized tips, advice, and strategies based on the child's response.
- To reach our target of 5 million students we aim to be in nearly 30,000 local schools and 500,000 homes by 2030.
- Our solution is designed for any learning setting with either no or low internet access which allows Tilli to access deep rural communities that are off the grid, and that are usually not serviced by traditional digital solutions.
- Over the past 2 years, we have also set up a robust co-creation and localization process that allows us to localize our learning content to a new language and community by adopting.
- To validate the efficacy, engagement, and scalability of our tool we tested the concept with the 1700+ learners:
Tilli is designed as both a physical learning kit and a digital application to be used at home and in classrooms. Our current focus is in South Asia, while Tilli can be effectively adopted to a new language in 1-2 weeks and is currently available in 3 languages.
South Asia (Sri Lanka)
- Kids (5-10-year-olds): At risk from unsafe digital spaces and need fun and playful learning experience to build life-long strategies and mindsets to navigate these complicated spaces with confidence. > Tilli is fun, and play-based and takes kids through a series of adventures in Tilli's world. The learning is almost stealth 😉
- Parents: Are becoming increasingly concerned about the safety and well-being risks faced by their kids but lack the language, training, and resources to get started with having these conversations. > Tilli is designed to help parents get started with having these conversations in an easy and playful way. It's like reading an interactive storybook while playing along. Parents also get access to an easy-to-read dashboard where they’re able to understand their child’s learning journey, identify their unique social-emotional needs and get personalized tips and strategies on how they can make better parenting decisions.
- Teachers: are inundated with existing syllabus demands and overworked. They recognize the need to have these critical conversations but lack interventions that are quick and easy to integrate into existing classroom schedules > Tilli is fun and play-based and only requires 45 minutes per week from a classroom. No preparation or extra work is required from the teacher.
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$25,000: Design and Development Costs: Designing and developing 3 new modules (physical kit and web application) focused on digital safety and well-being that build on our introductory modules on Trust and Digitial Safety which have been piloted with 1700+ learners.
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$10,000: Developing content and tools to support caregivers and teachers. Creating video tutorials and demos personalized for both parents and teachers on handling conversations around digital safety, tackling risky incidents online, noticing warning signs, and using the Tilli Learning kit and web-app.
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$5000: In-person training of trainers. We hope to run a series of 25-30 training sessions specifically targeting primary school teachers showing the Tilli Learning Kit in use and sharing actionable methods and content on having conversations about digital safety and well-being.
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$5000: Content localization: Translating our content into Hindi and Kannada.
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$5000: Outreach and community building efforts: We want to leverage creative partnerships with thought leaders, in-person activations, and community events to build a network of teachers and caregivers.
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- Partnerships with researchers and labs in the early childhood education space / social-emotional learning.
- Access to mentorship around designing scalable physical learning kits/toys
- Access to networks of teachers and school leaders.
| Name | Added on | |
|---|---|---|
 | Tilli Magic Safety Box-Pitch Deck.pdf | Nov 20, 2022 |
| Mock-ups of UI and Learning Kit.pdf | Nov 20, 2022 |
| Pilot Testing Results and User Testimonials .pdf | Nov 20, 2022 |
 | 3 Modules.png | Nov 21, 2022 |
 | Learning Experience.png | Nov 21, 2022 |
November 01, 2022
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