BeGenio - Helping Children Love Math Through Play

By 2023 the U.S. will be short 1 million needed STEM professionals. Too few young people, especially girls and youth of color are pursuing STEM careers. This is not only a loss for industry and the economy. Black and Latinx students pursuing STEM careers have reported they were motivated by their interest in social justice and wanted to use STEM to do good in their community or in the larger global community. 

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, our science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce is crucial to America’s innovative capacity and global competitiveness. Yet, women are vastly underrepresented in STEM jobs and among STEM degree holders despite making up nearly half of the U.S. workforce and half of the college-educated workforce.

Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs. The goal is to inspire confidence in our girls and empower them to pursue a career in STEM, if they so choose.

9 out 10 Americans have mathematical anxieties, and the problem became even bigger when COVID hit.  The New York Times stated that last year the pandemic wiped away 20 years of progress in mathematics and English and it’s costing the U.S. $1 Trillion a year.  So it’s no surprise that children hate math, don’t believe they can do well in the subject, and find it boring because they can’t relate it to real life and unfortunately, there are no effective and truly fun resources to practice math at school and at home.

Sadly, all of these realities easily lead to mathematical anxiety, an area where females are mostly impacted, and can affect their lives and their future opportunities. The bigger problem is that  many parents (moms) and teachers are afraid of math themselves and don’t know how to help in these areas. 

Children have lost months of learning during the time of COVID and the learning gap is wider than pre-COVID-19, making a solution to the math problem more urgent.  Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are worst hit from the school closures due to COVID and reports  show that these pupils are falling behind and require additional support. Their parents are usually from low-income communities and may also have suffered from math anxieties in their own childhoods. Math anxiety can easily lead on to low confidence and low self-esteem as well as a reduction in long term career opportunities. Parents, typically moms who do not feel confident in maths cannot support their children easily. This can reflect easily on the child and go on to present itself in school work performance and affect math attainment levels for the child and school.

Outside of BeGenio, no math games (our competitors) have scientifically and academically proven research showing the significant impact that BeGenio has for outcomes (fluency, reasoning and problem-solving ) nor are their games capturing data that the teachers and states desperately need to better assess and assist the students.

Our organization formed to bridge the STEM gap by igniting the imaginations of historically under-represented youth. We believe that prolonged, fun-informal exposure to STEM increases a child's interest and builds a foundation for proficiency through high school and beyond.

We strategically aligned our STEM priorities and invested in the creation of an international network of Innovation Sites that partner with one another to share curricula, training, data and other assets in unprecedented ways in order to engage more under-represented youth and identify best practices.

We created the BeGenio suite of games to solve these problems, where teachers/parents and children will be able to play together without stress, pain or struggle. Teachers and parents can now help their children effectively and make a positive difference in their children’s lives, without the fear of not knowing enough math or the fear of confusing the child with old methods.

Children aged 4-13+ can enjoy a fun board game and app, which enables them learn math without even realizing it!  The game is designed to have 6 variations, from Easy to the most difficult variation, BeGenio Expansion Decks, which enables the more adventurous children to challenge themselves. All 6 variations are fun packed.

Specifically aimed at children in Key Stages of early childhood development, the game has been designed with deep play value in mind; children will want to play the game again and again and will not be overly conscious that the focus is on improving math skills. The games’ appeal, however, does not end with children; parents and teachers will enjoy the challenges that are on offer and the game has been produced with an evolution in gameplay in mind which ensures that whether you are a parent, a 12-year-old, or a 7-year-old, there are benefits to be gained.

• It will detect weaknesses in children and help them improve through measured progress.
• It will encourage positive family time; sharing a game that actively enhances your child’s education.
• It will not be a battle to engage with because the math focus is subtly hidden within an intelligent pedagogical design produced with this difficult issue in mind.

Our board game was specifically designed in such a way that when children are using it they think are playing, but not realizing they are actually learning. The game is truly fun, deeply engaging, and very entertaining. 

• Children learn and improve their maths skills without realizing they are learning – develops analytical skills
• Develops decision making skills
• Develops critical thinking, creative thinking skills, logic, social and interaction skills.
• Extensible to make it harder or easier, and covers the core of the curriculum, including the Multiplication Timestable and the four operations.
• Has expansion decks that can be increased or created on the fly to teach literally anything else. It also has math tricks that make calculations lightning-fast for children.

We are targeting the 125 million girls of primary and secondary age in the developing world that are not connected in STEM. Girls’ exclusion from STEM education begins early and increases over their lifetime. While the vast majority of adolescent girls of upper secondary age begin primary education, fewer than half make it to the upper secondary level where STEM skills can be further solidified.

We serve the girls and women that are systematically tracked away from science and math throughout their education, limiting their access, preparation and opportunities to go into these fields as adults.

We support the teachers, who are predominantly women, that have math anxiety they pass onto girls, and they often grade girls harder for the same work, and assume girls need to work harder to achieve the same level as boys.

By outreach within schools, within and in After-School clubs, we offer support by way of fun tournaments and resources to the children who need it most but whose opportunities to access wraparound assistance and extra private tuition, are limited by financial limitations in their home.

BeGenio’s multi-award winning Race To Infinity game is used in thousands of schools for COVID catch-up sessions and extra fun maths practice. In partnership with BeGenio, the School Tournaments will take place towards the end of the Spring Term, just before the Easter holidays and with the aid of this grant, will be fully funded so there is no additional impact to the schools, already taxed system.

BeGenio's impact is far reaching.  It will do the following:

• Raise awareness that girls and women are as capable as boys.
• Give girls equitable encouragement and educational opportunities.
• Promote public awareness to parents about how they can encourage daughters as much as sons in math and science — supporting learning opportunities and positive messages about their abilities.
• Teach girls, teachers and parents that math skills are learned and malleable — promoting a growth mindset that empowers girls to embrace challenges.
• Emphasize strong and visible role models of women and women of color in math and science fields.

We recognize that the school teachers are already asked to do above and beyond.  We will provide game ambassadors to offset the responsibilities of the teachers and will maintain a seamless interface within the existing constructs of the school.

We also plan to work in the community.  Using local libraries for MeetUps, hosted and facilitated by our own staff.  Working with Religious institutions that offer before and after programs, and local tutoring organizations that commonly work with children that are struggling with math.

Providing this services to the marginalized communities, underserved populations, overtaxed school systems and special needs children will have a significant return on the minimal investment in not only the children, but in the economy.

We have a heart for the underserved and marginalized communities.  Typically these communities lack access to STEM based programming and traditionally don't take the time to access untapped children that have potential but don't fit the typical model.  Our team Lead is strategically located in Washington, D.C. area since 1986.  She knows the people, is engaged with the decision makers on Capital Hill, the White House and local members of the government counsel.  She is also active in the community through free services and that are provided for the low income and socially disadvantaged.  Her heart is for the young black females.  We are them!  Just Older, wiser and stronger with the help of our advisors like Ret. General John Phillips, Ret. General Jonathan Cofer and a long standing advisor, Patricia Ware who advised the last 9 administrations at the Vice President level.

BeGenio ambassadors are strategically located in the heart of the underrepresented communities.  In order to be a part of the solution, we have to be a part of the community.  One of our main core values is TRUST.  In order for us to help the community, they have to believe that we have their best interest.

We are continuously studying the impacts that young girls are facing as the internet has really changed the way they look at themselves.  We are actively seeking inputs from the parent, students, teachers and key stakeholders. 

Over the next two years, we plan to achieve our goals by focusing on the following outcomes:

User acquisition: We hope to attract a large user base (100,000 users) to our app by leveraging social media and other digital marketing strategies. We will measure our success in this area by tracking the number of downloads per month and analyzing user feedback to identify areas for improvement.

User retention: Once users have downloaded our app, we want to ensure they continue to use it on a regular basis. We plan to achieve this by providing regular updates and new content, improving the user interface and experience, and ensuring that the app provides measurable value to users.

User engagement: We want to ensure that our app is not only effective at improving math skills but also enjoyable to use. We plan to achieve this by incorporating gamification elements such as rewards, achievements, challenges and tournaments/leaderboards. We will measure our success in this area by tracking user feedback, referrals, and analyzing user engagement metrics.

Impact on STEM (math) skills: Ultimately, our success will be measured by the impact that the project has on children's math skills. We plan to conduct regular assessments and research to track user progress and compare it to benchmarks established by other math education programs and the National Curriculum expected outcomes. We will also conduct surveys and gather user feedback to better understand the impact our app is having on children's attitudes towards math.

BeGenio is utilized by 55k users around the world, 3k B2B (schools), and 30k B2C (parents), largely through our B2B strategic commercial partnership with Amazon.  Our product is available in 12 countries and available in 8 different languages (English, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, French, German, Italian, and Japanese).   Although we are in pilot phase, we have made a significant impact in the students, teachers and parents lives by our boots on ground technique.  

With over 90% of our funds coming from our bootstrapped efforts, we have been very strategic in how we are executing and scaling.  Our intent is to create a strong foundation that can scale in a holistic manner.  We have intentionally taken our time in making sure our solution provides value to the STEM community.  

We have involved several key stakeholders that have conducted the necessary research and due diligence on the existing user population.  This research has helped us evolve and refine our product line.  

In addition to the 55,000 children that have adopted BeGenio, we have also been successful in piloting this in the U.S.  We currently have 15k U.S. households utilizing BeGenios' Race To Infinity math game.  We have received great feedback indicating the positive impact the game is having on the children in the U.S.  We have altogether 1000+ positive reviews (33% U.S).

We have piloted our app in UK schools utilizing the Innovate UK grant and an independent assessment that afforded us the opportunity to research our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) prototype app in three schools, with an Innovate UK grant and European government grant (ERDF), and evidence based, scientific backed research.  

As we move into the the U.S. market space, we will utilize this proven approach to gain the necessary and proven results for the U.S. market.  We will continue to gain feedback from the user base and tailor our solution to the U.S. Common Core  national  curriculum and other statewide curriculums ensuring no child is left behind.  

Our team has made great strides since we formed over 6 years ago.  Slow and steady has proven to work well for us as we scale in a healthy manner.  Over the course of this time, we have experienced several challenges that have made us stronger.

Structuring our organization is a vital part of our success.  We recognize that in order to be sustainable, we have to start with the right foundation. We have recently added a co-Founder to lead the expansion work in the U.S. and we are in need of strong legal counsel to help establish the correct structure.  Our long term goal is for our C-Corp to be positioned for sale but first we are looking to establish our firm business proposition.  Because we've self funded over 90% of BeGenio, we lack the resources to obtain legal representation to guide our next steps.  

We're also fully established on Amazon and have done well up until COVID.  We ran into supply chain issues causing an impact on our financials that ultimately resulted in us not being able to keep our numbers up on the e-commerce site due to logistical issues.  We've proven experience in client acquisition processes, but we lack the funds to keep our numbers up and are limited in our capacity to sell directly from our website.

As we transition into the U.S. we've been receiving a cold welcome, because the proven research and success we received in the U.K. has not been automatically  translated to our ability to get the same results in the U.S. We lack access to the decision makers that have the ability to pursue and implement the game into the schools activities, both in classroom settings and in after school programming.

In addition, we've gained limited traction into the schools because there is a perceived perception by some that the game may be an extra responsibility for them to self-administer.  The unfortunate reality is many school systems have not incorporated this into their budgets from the start of the academic school year and the teachers/school systems have not accounted for funding to purchase the games.

Through our grassroots research, STEM initiatives have been targeted for upper middle class white males and we have been proposing strategies to foster inclusion for the female students that desire to penetrate this segment.  We are very sensitive to racial/culture/financial sectors and have struggled to bridge that great divide.  

We have been successful in raising eyebrows for the value of our solution, but we have not gained traction in getting commitments to implement, purchase and, invest in BeGenio as two black female executives. We need a strong U.S. backing to help us gain traction into the market and we need help taking our game to the digital game markets.  We have proof of concept now and have had several schools and students download the game and provide feedback, but we need a platform and developer to take our concept to the next level.

Washington D.C. is the mechanism we chose to center our initial focus.  The team lead is in close proximity to Maryland and Virginia which positions us for access to a much wider school population.  

Our office is located in a mixed-use community that is closely surrounded by all demographics.  This is a perfect fit for our brand.  We not only have access to the decision makers in office, we also have access to the parents that are desperately seeking help for their children.  

Christine is actively involved in public hearings, religious associations that are seeking educational help for their younger population, and STEM related initiatives within the surrounding community.

We are also working in Arizona to bring a stronger presence to STEM in the low income communities.  We have a location established to allow the children that normally would not have access to this type of STEM curriculum, to come, learn and play our games free of charge, and after school to help fortify their math skills.  It gives us an opportunity to gain trust in the community as good stewards, and also brings value to the education systems by providing this supplemental support.

We have also made great strides in connecting with new BeGenio ambassadors in Texas, Arizona, Florida, California, Washington, Maryland and Virginia.  We are working to get as many boots on the ground as possible to help bring awareness to this great solution.

Girls belong in STEM too! And we have made a significant effort to bring innovative education to people that this imbalance exists and to change the way we talk about STEM to our young women. We're using STEM to promote critical thinking and innovation as one of our secret sauces.  Our innovative solution doesn't focus on traditional metrics of how many answers the students knows, we desire the students to learn how to develop a critical stance in their work; inquiring, collaborating, thinking out of the box, and learning from another person's perspective and taking the information and acting on it.

Problem-solving isn't  just for laboratory thinkers hunkered down away from the classroom. Students from elementary can use play to imagine strategies to solve real problems. Problem-solving involves finding answers to questions and solutions for undesired effects.  We use these iterative steps to help students consider critical questions about the problem, and guide them through options to solve that problem.

Our competitive research shows that we are different because of our deep play value and replayability features creating sustainable results that leaves the children wanting to play again without becoming bored. In most cases the teachers were highly positive about the development of general social skills, including oracy, communication, collaboration, and enjoyment without pressure.  Our tool also captures data for teachers and government to assess learning. 

Our competition lack innovation in comparison to our solution:

Math not integrated into the game 

No VR, No AR for full-game experience

Math taught as a series of rigid rules

Only questions/quizzes based on animation

Not enough play 

Not SCIENTIFICALLY nor ACADEMIC-RESEARCH PROVEN to develop outcomes

Our innovation project is to create a SaaS Augmented-Reality App based on a  proven physical game. 

The App will:  

• Help children eradicate mathematical anxiety 

• Allow for real-time improvement opportunity for children, real-time progress  tracking and weaknesses detection that will be based on a game, using Artificial  Intelligence.  

• Help children meet the key aims of the U.S. Curriculum – which include fluency,  reasoning and problem solving 

• Help children learn while playing, without realizing they are learning 

• Incorporate the notion of play-learning and higher emotional factors  

• Make augmented reality work well for those with learning disabilities, whose needs are usually not included in existing augmented reality offerings or solutions 

•Video analysis of math reasoning and problem solving activity.  

•Link the online world through the App with the physical board game, by  children simply pointing their digital device to the physical board. 

• Help teachers teach, help children learn, and help parents support their  children with math. 

• Create a fully effective resource that can be used within the classroom and after school clubs for math mastery.

Unlike our competitiors, relate math to real life in 5 different ways including AR, VR, Mixed Reality, Volumetric Video and Motion Capture, and not just in one or two ways.

The App will also identify gaps through our gap analysis tests tailored to the required Curriculum

STEM education goes far beyond traditional school subjects. It provides a set of skills that guide the way we think and act in everyday life. Our goal is to bring STEM education sectors to helps us meet the challenges facing the world today. 

GOAL 1: Prepare 100,000 Young Girls for STEM careers: BeGenio provides STEM education that links these disciplines into a cohesive system and transform society with innovation and sustainable careers.

GOAL 2: Create Social Awareness and develop critical life skills: BeGenio develops essential skills for any job.  We will work to bridge ethnic and gender gaps. Through engagement and participation of schools, policymakers, parents, students, and educators we will continue technological and scientific progress. This will help Well-educated community members find ways to work in a competitive world.

GOAL 3: Encourage greater inclusion of women and minorities in STEM fields: Women leaders change the world.  We know that gender diversity broadens the viewpoints, questions, and areas explored by researchers, allowing greater potential for new discoveries. We are seeking underrepresented groups in math, so the world won't miss out on valuable innovations and ideas that alternate perspectives bring to the table.

GOAL 4: Foster creativity and divergent thinking alongside fundamental disciplines. The outcome will inspire young people to generate new ideas, with a focus on practice and innovation.

GOAL 5: Reduce Poverty: Decades of economic segregation are difficult to undo through education policy alone, so we are working with state and education leaders to adopt BeGenio strategies for boosting opportunities in schools with the highest concentrations of poverty. 

By implementing BeGenio we believe the children will have future lucrative careers, like the founders of BeGenio.  We are providing them the skills to learn more critical thinking and ability to be more innovative, it will support teamwork, and will help students develop project management skills.

We plan to work in the following areas through partnerships through the following structures to achieve our strategic goals:

Parents: To empower parents to support their girls with math, to increase their confidence and grades through play, easily, stress-free and pain-free, without having to relearn math.

Schools/Teachers: To support teachers with effective resources that truly work, to make math fun, increase girl’s math engagement, grades, confidence and enjoyment through evidence based research.

Educational Publishers & Distributors: To supply them with resources that give excellent value in making math fun and helping their customer’s children (parents and schools) enjoy and love math, and increase their grades and confidence. 

Governments: To help Governments provide resources that help their young citizens and youths increase confidence and grades, enjoy math and increase opportunities for them for the future; and gain the crucial life skills they need to later contribute effectively to the economy.

Our goals:

We plan to have completed and launched the FULL App (not just the MVP). We would have sold 160,000 copies of board games (combined), including 100,000 copies of Race To Infinity  ($2.4 million in revenue using $15 average), and would have expanded into 20 countries. The App would be patented in the UK, USA, EU, Canada, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, India, Taiwan and China. Our team would have expanded to include a Lawyer, CSO, COO, CMO and Co-Founder. We will be in stores in the UK and USA and will also continue to target Schools, Parents, Educational publishers, Governments. 

We are measuring, reporting and testing as we go:

1. Requirements Gathering, Analysis and Schools & Educational Publishers’ Recruitment

2. Testing Phase 1 : Focus groups

The groups will focus on conducting up to 4 focus groups with different stakeholders who would engage with the app. This would involve the focus groups attendees trialling the app, and then providing feedback. The focus groups would be held with the following groups: 1) students, 2) teachers, 3) parents, and 4) publishers in the assessment field.

The focus groups will provide the chance to see how the BeGenio assessment tool works, and will include a discussion of the positives and the negatives of the platform.

3. Testing Phase 2: Extended Use Survey

This part of the research plan will involve recruiting young people and schools to use it for 1 -3 months.

They will be asked to fill in a short questionnaire at the end of every week to track usage and experience with the app (this will be no longer than 10 questions), however this will not be mandatory. After 1 month of use, participants will be asked to come in / join online for a 45 min interview to ask them questions around their experience of the use of the app (question areas similar to those in the focus groups). This would be done via teachers, and we would track skills development via them as well.

Reporting:

At the end of this research, we will provide a final report and recommendations based on our findings. This will include (but not limited to): An understanding of user experience with the BeGenio Race To Infinity app; An understanding of any disconnects between desired user experience and real; Recommendations for enhanced user experience; Understanding of what works for sustained engagement with the app; What the app accomplishes in terms of skills development; Report documenting app tested across a range of mobile devices and end user profiles, and Collated feedback on usability and feature completeness from end users.

Adjusting:

We are developing our app utilizing an Agile methodology.  We are identifying requirements discovery and solution improvements through the collaborative effort of self organizing and cross-function teams. This iterative approach will ensure we are on target with our projected goals.

Race To Infinity! is a board game in which children take turns to roll two 12-sided dice and choose whether to add, subtract, multiply or divide their values in order to move around the board, based on where it is strategically best to land. The objective of the game is to be the first to land on the Race To Infinity! space in the centre on the board. Before this, children need to move around the outside circular path, collecting 200 credits in money. If they wish, they can collect mathematical Luck Cards; this might indicate willingness to take risks; for example, it might state that you can only move forward if you throw an even number.

Data were gathered through teacher observations of children playing the game, and were recorded via ‘Teacher Questionnaires’, ‘Teacher Interviews’ and ‘Transcripts’ of children’s conversations.

89% of participants felt children made at least ‘some’ progress against all three aims. Fluency was most efficacious, with the highest percentage of participants perceiving progress to be ‘good’ or ‘exceeding’ expectations. The children’s fluency has definitely improved over the course of the term where we administered the game, especially with regards to the four operations.

‘It provides the opportunity to continually use their core number skills- adding, subtraction, sometimes multiplying and dividing’

’Is useful as a tool to engage those pupils who experience anxiety in math, as it is a non- threatening way of developing math skills, with low risk’.  

"Children used their oracy skills to discuss through problems they faced ... there were great discussions developed through talk, working out how to travel around the board when calculating larger numbers’

‘Children became better at helping each other and exploratory talk’

‘Through teamwork children were able to support each other when they encountered difficulty’

‘It also develops oracy, pushing them to use terminology that they may not already know or need support with using’

100% of participants perceived that, as one of several measures, it could provide additional support for Covid-19 ‘catch-up’, specifically for practice of the four operations in ways that might reduce anxiety. 

The game also includes support systems for the users, in the form of scaffolding questions or visual aids that improve the learning experience for the children. Teachers felt overwhelmingly that the app encouraged children to talk about the math involved in their decision-making, helping to develop their reasoning and problem-solving skills, which are key components of the national curriculum.

https://www.racetoinfinity.com

https://www.easymathskills.com

The App Tech: ARCore, ARFoundation, Unity game engine, Python and Microsoft Azure.  The innovative angles of the project include the following, functionality of which we will be testing with users:

The app detects math weaknesses in children just by them playing a game. 

Register board location. The AR app will be able to identify the phone’s location with respect to the physical space (which in this instance is the physical boardgame). This required using machine vision toolkits to locate the board using the phone’s camera.

In order to be able to understand the current game state, the location of the playing pieces must be identified on the board. In the first instance this involved altering the physical pieces, for example adding subtle markers so they can easily be identified by machine vision toolkits.

The app overlays virtual components on the phone’s camera view of the physical scene on the phone’s screen. As is standard in AR experiences, these overlayed elements appear world-fixed, i.e., when the phone camera’s view updates, the virtual elements update such that they appear to remain static in the world.

Prototype overlays virtual elements on to the phone camera’s view of the physical board and displays the composited scene on the phone’s screen. These virtual elements appear world fixed.

The app overlays relevant move hint AR element onto the board. Given the app’s understanding of the board location and player piece location, overlays only the board moves that the user can take given this game state. It overlays basic move hints to the player, given the app’s understanding of the game state and rules.

It digitized the game rules, including encoding the rules of the game into a player AI system. This allows the app to propose good moves to the player based on the current game state. Therefore app suggests good moves to player, which is mathematics they need for their age in relation to the National Curriculum.

Has functionality that mostly implements an algorithm to detect weaknesses in players’ maths skills. For example, a heuristic system that identifies if players are avoiding using multiplication operations (indicating a hesitancy with multiplication in the player). It maps how this process works in face-to-face scenarios and creates software to mimic this.

May 24, 2023 – Peabody Trust award:  MVP App of BeGenio won a Prestigious Award for “Collaboration demonstrating exceptional use of creative technology with an Education focus”

Evidence-based Academic Research in 9 Schools with Prof. Jenny Field, Professor of Mathematics Education (National Teaching Fellow, NCETM & HEA Senior Fellow)

The Student Average 57% increase (from 53.33 to 83.75) in times tables over a 3-month term.  ‘Race To Infinity game’ is Linked to the  3 key aims of the National Curriculum Vast majority of teachers reported that Race To Infinity game helped children make progress in reasoning, math fluency, and problem-solving skills.

Innovate UK conducted a very successful research and user testing on the Race To Infinity App, which resulted in excellent user feedback (report attached).

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/02etYVUNhGfEtZ8c4MB8JpNDw#Article_Submission_Pdf

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/01892CRcheJLMtD8ecDdDgrtQ#Innovate_UK_Testing_and_Research_-_Race_To_Infinity_App_-_Draft_Report

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/089N05xHR6bF6NWV51ObdnsIw#MA_ATM_Conference_2023_-_Prof_Jennifer_Field

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/074kW4twyZqh2pBVsjQjsBzKw#Testimonials_from_Schools_Tournaments_&_Race_To_Infinity_Maths_Game_Sessions

Multiple Achievements and National / International Awards including:

- WINNER - Hi3 Network Education Tech Award, backed by HM Government 2023 - (for Race To Infinity App)

- Department for International Trade Export Champion 2023

- INNOVATE UK’s Women in Innovation Award 2022/23 - FINALIST

- Department for International Trade Export Champion 2022

- Best Games List - The School Run, UK renowned Educational Publication and Resource - 2022

- Department for International Trade Export Champion 2021

- Department for International Trade Export Champion 2020

- HONORARY DOCTORATE (PhD) - Awarded in recognition of helping children fall in love with Mathematics – London Metropolitan University – 2019

- Royal Borough of Greenwich Best of Business Awards – WINNER 2019; JUDGE in 2020

- UK Independent Toy Awards – Educational Games Category - WINNER – Silver - September 2020

- Royal Borough of Greenwich Business Awards 2019 – Small Business Category – WINNER – February 2019 (UK National Award)

- USA - Won the How To Home School Award in the USA - 2018

- UK - Won the Best Family Game Award in the UK Imagination Gaming Awards - 2018 - Bronze

- UK - Won the Best Maths Game Award in the UK Imagination Gaming Awards – 2018 - Bronze

- WINNER - Women Inspiring Women UK National Awards 2014

- WINNER - Women Inspiring Women UK National Awards 2013

ENDORSEMENTS – National Numeracy (Family Maths Toolkit), Good Toy Guide and Royal Borough of Greenwich
ARTICLES – UK Mathematics Association Journal, Summer 2023 Edition on Race To Infinity Academic Research Results
MEDIA INTERVIEWS: BBC NEWS

‘Now in their 13th year, the Independent Toy Awards enjoy unrivalled respect within the industry, we were voted for – not by “experts”, “testers” or “panels” – but by those at the sharpest end of the industry… the nation’s independent toy retailers’. This makes a place in the Winner’s group very special to everyone at BeGenio because it further validates our belief that educational games, especially those that make learning fun, have a very important part to play in the Toy sector.

Fulltime 4

Parttime: 8

Board Members: 3

Advisors: 5

We have been working on this for 6+ years.

At BeGenio, we believe that everyone has a purpose and we know that many children just need an opportunity, an advocate and some guidance to become a hero.  We work within our organization to create this atmosphere and we bake it into our approach to STEM Education.

WE START EARLY. The earlier you can empower students to feel confident and excited about STEM topics, the better. We don't wait until the end of high school to educate students and it's never too early to plant the seed for future academic success in STEM. We establish STEM literacy and identity at a young age so students will be more empowered as they grow up.

WE USE OUR ORGANIZATION AS A REAL-LIFE EXAMPLE. Sometimes math and engineering can seem daunting and overwhelming in the classroom. Students may not know where to start when they start to think about their potential future careers. To change this, we've made these topics real and relatable. We show them how a complex math problem could relate to a real-life situation. These practical applications and real-world examples are a key way to illuminate the many ways students could use these subjects in the real world.

WE LOOK FOR THE STEM. Many students/parents don't know if they have an interest in STEM. It could be anything from reading science fiction books to being interested in the brain. We take a holistic approach to look at interests and giftings, and encourage them to pursue their passions. We also, see who takes opportunities in school to connect to science, technology, engineering, and math and we direct them in connecting to the STEM community.

WE ADDRESS CULTURE ISSUES. We believe that by giving students of all backgrounds and abilities an equal chance to learn and love STEM, we are nurturing a next generation of successful professionals, bold thinkers, and passionate leaders.” STEM isn’t going anywhere, so we think a proactive approach to addressing these inequities is needed.

WE MAKE STEM ACCESSIBLE. While many diversity initiatives have supported equity based on race or gender, fewer strategies have addressed inequality and accessibility issues for people with disabilities. We help students that are faced with an inaccessible learning environment by making BeGenio a solution that supports visual impairment.  In future version, we are working to make our text bigger for the visually impaired and are making our app Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-Compliant). We are mindful of color blindness and mindful of fiddly components and have created a human-sized board game for kids having trouble picking up small objects.

We've designed our game to address the following:

• Inclusive: Implicit bias is studied and countered, and educators are aware of how students may be marginalized. 
• Normalize: Diverse contributions are encouraged, and different perspectives are accepted.
• Relevant: Topics are meaningful to the lives of the students and their communities. 
• Empower: Students have the tools and opportunities to embrace learning and are encouraged to pursue free thinking.

Our ultimate business model is designed to make mathematics fun and accessible to children and to help them improve their problem-solving abilities. We are creating an impact by empowering children to become more confident in their math abilities and encouraging them to pursue careers that require strong math skills. We are also helping parents and educators by providing a tool that makes it easy to assess children's math abilities and track their progress.

• Value proposition - BeGenio is the only proven math/STEM game backed by academic, school, and student research.  Studies show that students scores increased an average of 57% after a semester of playing the game.  
• Key customers - We are working with B2B directly with the schools and also selling B2C on e-commerce (Amazon). We also have a sizable licensing agreement and are looking to secure more.
• Key activities - We are keenly focused in partnering in proximity with the schools.  We are constantly evolving and working to make our suite of games more valuable and impactful to our consumers.
• Revenue streams - We have 3 revenue streams selling directly to B2C businesses/schools. B2C selling our product on Amazon, and licensing agreements to promote other businesses as our BeGenio ambassadors.
• Key expenses - To date we have been penny wise. And as we scale, we are  planning on incorporating salaries for our founders and also bring on full time employees to complete the development of the app, provide a marketing team, and deploy BeGenio brand ambassadors.  

We believe that when we can achieve these outcomes, we will have successfully created a product that makes math fun and accessible to children, helps parents and educators identify areas for improvement, and ultimately, improves math skills and problem-solving abilities. Through our work, we hope to make a positive impact on society by encouraging more children to pursue STEM careers that require stronger mats skills and fostering a greater appreciation for mathematics in general.

Project: BeGenio Bootstrap US

Goal: Demonstrate traction of BeGenio (physical game and beta app) in the United States to secure additional funding (to be used for realizing a market-ready,  'generally available' (GA) version of the app and companion board games, in addition to additional resources required for realizing the 3-year business plan targets of BeGenio).

How: Leverage existing / planned investments or grants to roll-out a free Winning With Math (WWM) Pilot to at least 10 major school districts in the US (West, Central, Northeast and Southeast markets). The WWM Pilot would include the following:

• Free board games for each unit (classroom) for the relevant demographic in each school district
• One Senior BeGenio ambassador for each school district (provided by BeGenio)
• One Local BeGenio ambassador for each individual school (sourced by the school district in collaboration with the Senior BeGenio ambassador, and trained by the Senior BeGenio ambassador for each school district)
• Training materials for each unit / classroom, with training coordinated by the Local ambassador for each school

Pilot Requirements: Classrooms must complete one semester of BeGenio gameplay (at least 1 session per week (15-30 min) with the physical game and at least 1 session with the app) that concludes with completion of an Evaluation Survey of teachers, students and their parents.

Pilot Benefits: 

• Tapping into a FREE, award-winning curriculum -- including teacher training, classroom and digital learning materials -- that has been proven to reduce math anxiety and improve core math skills in 3 studies across  global geographies, including the United Kingdom.
• Opportunities to showcase school district participation via national media outlets, press and influencers
• Registration with BeGenio as a preferred adopter, guaranteeing preferred rates and other benefits with future BeGenio programs and products

Next Steps: Complete a rough sizing for required resources (starting with physical games) given the choice of 10 ideal school districts and then proceed to scope and size the investment including marketing/promotional materials and time/labor for staff, including the Ambassadors. We'll produce a production-quality program summary, both digital and printed formats, that could be used for 'sales' (sourcing participation from the school districts). We'll craft the 'sales' strategy (likely outbound, pre-selected targets only) we've mapped out everything with a project plan on a timeline. 

As we move into the U.S. market space, we will focus on the following methods to become financially sustainable:

Grants: We are positioning our team to identify, solution, and conduct grant writing to secure funding to support our marketing, development, and operations expenses.  We are targeting STEM, Education, Minority, Innovation, and EdTech grants.  We have created a grant tracker to identify, track, and respond to grants in our pipeline. Our current grant pipeline is $3M and the grantors span across our 5 target areas. 

Selling Products: 160,000 games within first 3 years and increase sales in the out years. 140,000 freemium downloads of the app with 5% upgrade subscription. (Total Sales $3M board games/Total Sales $2.8M App downloads)

Raising Investment Capital:   $550k / SBA Loan $50k / $10k Donations

BeGenio was established in November 2016.  Early 2017, we received over $10k in crowd funding from Indiegogo and utilized those funds along with $310k in self funding to start the development with a very lean team.  We launched the first board game, Race To Infinity in 2017 and sold approximately 1000 games with a total in sales of $60k.   In 2018, we sold approximately 3000 games B2C and B2B totaling $100k.  With an additional $50k from an Investor (Rebecca Artmonsky) in 2018. With those funds we were able to for stock and marketing. In 2019, we sold approximately 4000 games totaling $120k.  In 2020, we made $110k gross profit and $22k net profit and captured 4000 in game sales.  We also received our first licensing agreement of $73k (delivered 20,000 games).

AND THEN>>>We took a COVID hit in 2021 due to logistical issues during the pandemic, although demand from parents were at an all-time high, manufacturers were closed and we ran out of stock. We had a gross profit of $129k During that down time we developed 5 new games, 2 board games and 3 card games.  We have printed 5 of the 6 new games and have published in 6 languages. In addition, we started the development of our Race To Infinity app that is 80% completed for MVP and has received several awards based on the research conducted. This game is a  digital AR/VR App at MVP stage and is currently going through testing.  Our projections are showing an increase up to 7 times our last normal year sales revenue post-investment.

With expected investment of $50k and a potential SBA loan of $50k in June-July of 2023, we plan to ramp our advertising and marketing to regain the B2C market share.

Through our Nonprofit arm, Education with Ease, we are creating a strong marketing campaign utilizing BeGenio brand ambassadors within 10 strategic states.  (Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Texas, Arizona, California, Illinois, Michigan, Florida, and Washington.  We are targeting several state and local grants to fund the cost of the games and are offering to implement this within the schools for free.  We will also have each school download our freemium app so we can receive valuable feedback to support our ongoing development strategy and also gain additional requirements to finalize the digital app.