Ubongo Kids: Tanzania's Homegrown Edu-Cartoon Season 1

Ubongo Kids

Ubongo Kids is Tanzania's first homegrown cartoon series, designed to help kids discover the joys of math through fun, local stories and songs. We're turning to Kickstarter to help us adapt our first 13-episode TV season from Kiswahili to English, for broadcast to millions more kids across Africa and web viewers around the world.
Please help us spread the word about Ubongo Kids! Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our YouTube Channel!
Ubongo is a Tanzanian social enterprise that creates fun, localized edutainment for learners in Africa.  "Ubongo" means brain in Kiswahili, and we're all about finding fun ways to stimulate kids (and kids at heart) to use their brains.  Our entertaining media help learners understand concepts, rather than memorizing them. And we use catchy songs and captivating imagery to make sure they never forget!

Ubongo Kids follows Tanzanian cartoon kids Kibena, Kiduchu and Koba as they use their minds and math skills to solve problems in their village, with the help of their talking and singing animal friends: Mama Ndege (a math whiz bird), Uncle T (a rapping giraffe), and Da Chura (a frog who ribbits important vocab).
We use edutainment to help kids see math in a new light and learn fundamental math concepts through fun, relatable stories-- which we get out to as many learners as possible using widely available technologies. Internet and smartphone penetration is still low in Sub Saharan Africa, but 37.5 million households have TV (Informa Telecoms & Media, 2011), and tens of millions more watch TV in communal screening spaces.  English is an official language in 23 African countries, and adapting Ubongo Kids to English will allow kids from Nigeria to Malawi to learn from Mama Ndege and friends!
We believe that Ubongo Kids is a small but important step towards transforming informal education in Africa.

Test screening in a rural school, Kigoma Region

Watch a webisode with English captions to see it for yourself:

Our core team worked unpaid for 7 months to create the concept of Ubongo Kids and produce the first six episodes. Now, thanks to sponsorship from CRDB Bank in Tanzania, the first season of Ubongo Kids (in Kiswahili) is showing on Tanzanian national TV... and on YouTube as weekly webisodes. We have an SMS-based live interaction system, which allows viewers to answer multiple-choice questions while watching the show, and get feedback and encouraging messages from our cartoon characters. 

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