Kids Donate App

“KidsDonate” App promotes the philanthropic decision-making and actions among children and teens by making donations simpler, more purposeful, more transparent, scam free and more cost effective. 

Many charitable organizations need help & support to realize their mission. Different charities see solutions to the problems in society whether in nature, education, or other problems. Hence this app is a solution to help support their mission, by collecting funds from children and teens to support the worthy causes.

As well as helping those in need, the evidence shows getting children involved in philanthropy has positive effects for the children, their families and society more generally as it will help overcome the individualistic tendencies predominant in the modern society today.

The KidsDonate app will teach the children and teens about the empathy - an emotional skill that is needed to live in a society – and philanthropy as a way for children to practice decision-making.

Research shows that teaching children about philanthropy is not only the key to helping children be more empathetic but also “happier, smarter and more successful” .

Children who perform acts of kindness experience increased wellbeing, popularity and acceptance among peers. This, in turn, leads to better classroom behaviour and higher academic achievement.

As well as raising vital funds for many worthy causes, the purpose of the app is to engage children in giving behaviours early on will help to develop ‘habits’ of giving that stay with them throughout their lives for them to become empathetic and charitable citizens. To this end: The KidsDonate will engage the children in decisions as to who they give to, how they give or why and will have a mechanism to ensure transparency in fees, purposeful donating, protection against scams and proof of donation (certificate with all the details)

• Developed using Pictoblox, the app helps charities raise more donations from children and teens while teaching the children about empathy and decision making for their philanthropic actions.
• Through engaging children in giving behaviors early on the purpose is to help to develop ‘habits’ of giving that stay with them throughout their lives.
• "KidsDonate" will:
  1) engage the children in decisions as to who they give to, how they give or why and protect the children when it comes to online scams 
  2) address children’s expectations as donors who want to know that ideally 100% of financial gift is being used to help those in need and for the cause that is close to their heart.

• Thus, "KidsDonate" offers a mechanism to ensure transparency in fees, purposeful donating, protection against scams and proof of donation (certificate with all the details)
• "Kids donate makes donations simpler, more purposeful, more transparent, scam free, documented and more cost effective.
• Feature 1: space for the direct message to the charities stating the  purpose for the donation
• Feature 2: transparent flat fee of 10 dollars for the money transfer rather to give to donors confidence that the donation reaches those in need to help the cause. 
• Feature 3 to protect the children/teems from scams related to donations not to discourage philanthropic behaviors by unfortunate accidents (list of recommended validated charities)
• Using voice recognition, the app will know what you say. If you say “donate”, the app will lead to donating to a charity. If “find out more”, the app will lead to a space where with an explanation on what "KidsDonate" is and Q&A regarding my app! If “charities”, the app will recommend the top 5 charities are donated to!
• Feature 4: Donations are documented by certificates stating the details of donation, transfer fee, charity and purpose.

• Short term perspective: The solution helps the charities raise more money from children/teens/young adults for their causes.
• Medium term: The solution serves the children and teens from developed countries by encouraging philanthropic actions; the benefits to the children, their families and society at large.
• The overall purpose is to grow children into charitable citizens with actions and values that are rooted in ideas of kindness, fairness and empathy – the building blocks of social justice and democracy. Only then the world will become a better place, where the aim is to minimize the inequalities, finding constructive solutions to word’s more pressing problems, minimize the conflict and optimize the global collaboration. , 

• I am prefect in my school and the main motivation behind KidsDonate is that I care about the children development and issues that impact them during their formative years. Through the development of this app, I want to ensure that all the positive benefits on children’s development are secured and that no children/teens become victims of scams while trying to do good.
• I would like to make the KidsDonate app available for all children in Singapore as a start – once the app is successful, I would definitely find ways to launch it in other developed countries. This is my plan:

The statistics of the Singapore Ministry of Education below will help us estimate how many children from primary and secondary schools could benefit from this app.

Statistics by  Ministry of Education Enrollment 2022

Total 510,714

Primary 263,906

Secondary 214,388 The KidsDonate app can be made available on the smartphone. Even if we assume that children from P1 to P3 do not have smartphones, it is safe to assume that we could extend SafeDonate to at least 300.000 children in Singapore. The app can be downloadable from AppleStore and the Ministry of Education to promote it for parents and teachers who would help to introduce it to children.

 Promotion of the purpose, benefits and “how the app works” There are several things that I would be happy to do to explain the purpose and benefits and the functionalities of the app to the children and teens - my target users. I could make an introductory video to spread awareness about the purpose of this app to help explain the benefits and how it works. This video could be sent to parents on Parents Gateway in all public schools. With parents’ permission, the children could download the app on their own phones and use it. I am sure that international schools have also software applications similar to Parents Gateway so the distribution to international schools could be more “ fragmented “ and time consuming but possible with extra effort. I am sure that in each school I could find “early adopters” among prefects. I would expect to get them more excited and interested in the app before everyone else is. They would hopefully become my app “ambassadors” who would talk about it to other students and help me spread the word about the benefits of the app and get others interested in trying it out. I could also do a “zoom roadshow” and run online sessions for those schools who would be interested in inviting me to answer children’s questions. Zoom sessions can safely accommodate around 100 children each time. Those sessions could be recorded and played at school during recess for those who could not join or if the zoom capacity was already reached. “KidsDonate App Ambassadors” would help me with the organization of that.

• I completed a comprehensive desk research on several aspects which built the purpose for my solution: examples: a) challenges of donating to charities b) participation of children in fund raising of charities c) benefits of philanthropic interests and engagement on children d) children as vulnerable group when it comes to scams
• My own observations based on the engagement with my peers in community and at school trying to validate the findings from desk research – interviews with my friends on their motivations

Examples of research sources:

• Jackie King, The conversation: Giving the gift of giving: why children should be taught philanthropy”
• According to developmental psychologist Marilyn Price Mitchell, “Acts of Kindness” published in “Psychology today”)
• According to CNBC (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/1... ir-grandparents.html) there were 23,200 scam complains to FBI by teens under 21 in 2020 that cost $71 million. While it is a global problem, in my country alone in Singapore, nearly $1 billion has been lost by scam since 2016 as reported by the Strait Times (https://www.straitstimes.com/s... gapore-since-2016) and confirmed that the children are more susceptible to scams than adults. Children and teens are easy targets because we are gullible and ignorant while being on the internet as stated on National Cybersecurity Alliance (https://staysafeonline.org/blog/social-cyber-threats-facing-children-teens-2018/)
• Body et al., 2019, 2020)
• Roughley and Schramme, 2018, p. 3