Financial Education for Kids – Teaching Modern Money to Children

Money is complex

Money is a complex topic for adults. Although money is something that we use often and it is part of our everyday life, most of us do not have a real grasp of the meaning of money as well as its characteristics. Financial literacy only becomes part of our education at later stages of life and the learning phase is also a steep learning curve. If we add children in the mix, it becomes even more difficult to explain the meaning of money, how it works, its attributes like fungibility, medium of exchange, store of value and so on. The advent of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology has made it even more difficult to explain not only money but programmable money or ‘Internet Money’.

Financial Literacy Initiative

Although money is a complex subject, this does not reduce the importance of knowing and teaching kids about its significance. Horizon Africa, in its mission of educating people about blockchains and cryptocurrencies, is launching an initiative called the YUKU Initiative which aims at helping people understand cryptocurrencies in a fun and practical way, with activities instead of boring explanations. The initiative also aims at increasing the financial literacy of parents and children by allowing them to engage in non-cash economic activities, even extending to making online purchases via tokens.

YUKU Token

To show the properties of money and cryptocurrencies in particular, the YUKU token was created on the Horizon Africa Blockchain, which is a permissioned blockchain, set up by Horizon Africa Ventures Ltd, a startup specialized in the blockchain technology. Although the YUKU token does not have any monetary value, it still maintains the characteristics of a cryptocurrency or real money. YUKUs are held in the Horizon Africa Wallet App (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.horizonafrica.app). The wallet also allows you to spend the YUKUs in online activities.

Safer than Real Money

The most prominent advantage of using YUKUs instead of real money is in terms of security. In the current situation, it is safer to use tokenized assets, which are free than to use real money for any educational purpose. Having your kid walking around with hundred bills can be a security concern. The children will hold the tokens in their mobile wallet safely as an application currency which does not have any monetary value.

Modern Money

It is no surprise that crypto currencies have taken the world by storm. Apart from the monetary value of crypto currencies, the underlying technology is game changing. Having a way to teach children about money based on decentralization is really the best thing that could be done in terms of financial literacy. Kids are nowadays more suited to learning about new technologies than most adults and the YUKU initiative is the perfect way of doing so.

Where to use YUKU

YUKUs can be used online to buy NFTs or digital pictures on Mimi NFTs (https://mimi.moris.store). This provides a way to actually use the YUKUs for real, in a practical way. Mimi NFT is an online project which has been created to show how NFTs are created and exchanged online.

YUKUs can also be used between family members as a medium of exchange for different activities. Parents can use YUKUs as a reward mechanism to encourage kids to do chores, complete their homework or perform any other productive activity. Children can then spend their YUKUs for treats like going out to eat, having special food like pizzas and so on. YUKUs can become an integral part of the financial activity within a household or even between friends.

How to Participate in the YUKU Initiative

The steps involved to participate in the YUKU Initiative include:

• Both the parent and the children to download and install the Horizon Africa Wallet (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.horizonafrica.app) - currently only the Android version is available with the IOS version coming in a few weeks.
• Add YUKU in your list of tokens.
• Join our Facebook group to participate in the community (https://www.facebook.com/groups/477432676896878).