Season 3 in Digital Financial Education was officially awarded on the 13th of June at the Ministry for Social Policy & Children’s Rights. The winners who are University students in their final year of their AI course were awarded two cheques of €1,500 for the 1st and €1,250 for the 2nd prize. Both were present by Mr Mark Musu, the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Social Policy and Children’s Rights who congratulated the winners in the presence of ĠEMMA team leader Helena Holland and Drs Charlie Abela and Joel Azzopardi from the department of Artificial Intelligence within the University of Malta .
All the speakers had words of encouragement to the winners which are Daniel Grech, Celine Suban and Mattaeo Farrugia with their design concept called Cash Target. They won first prize fot their concept and design. It is expected that the prototype which is the 2nd phase of Cash Target will be developed in the coming months.
The digital application called Karus were the winners of season 2 gamification prototype. The application devised by AI students Andrew Magri and Daniel Attard is focused on building the financial relationship between parents and children through understanding the value of money and setting goals. Karus is currently being tested amongst focus groups and will be ready to launch by October 2022. Both Andrew and Daniel were very pleased that their dream of Karus has finally materialised and were extremely enthusiastic when they received the award.
Through the signing of the MOU in 2019, between ĠEMMA within the office of the Permanent Secretary and the AI Unit within the University of Malta, three gamification applications have been developed, The first one was called Money Monster which following its upload on all the primary schools tablets has garnered popularity as it has been widely used by children to get familiar with the value of money and the importance of taking the right financial decisions.
Thanks to the close partnership between ĠEMMA and the University of Malta together with the guidance of Drs Charlie Abela and Joel Azzopardi who have mentored and encouraged students to participate in this gamification competition more tools are available to support the importance of financial education amongst the Maltese community.
The top 2 winning teams
Winning team Cash Target
Charlie Abela talking about how through financial Gamification the Teams have learnt the importance of Money Management