A free Bulgy for all children in Portugal to learn to navigate their emotions.
Summary
Bulgy ( www.emotionathletes.org ) is a pedagogical and playful children's series that develops socio-emotional skills ("SEL", "Social and Emotional Learning"). Designed for families and schools that value emotional intelligence and with children between 5 and 10 years old, it provides 18 videos, songs that suggest conversations between children's adults, manual activities, and educational and quality podcasts. The characters in the videos are puppets and the main character is Ginja (the puppet in the page logo). Each activity day takes between 10 minutes and 1 hour to complete. It is completely autonomous, without needing our help or reading or previous training. Families and schools can access the content on our page and follow Emotional Athletics flexibly and at their own pace.
We started during the pandemic in June 2020 and have been working with volunteer work and with our savings. We decided to give Ginja for free to reach as many children as possible regardless of their means.
After a year, we need your help. We don't do Ginja for money, but we need money to continue. We want to keep Ginja completely free to reach as many children as possible. Often, the children who most need help with their emotions are the ones who cannot afford it. If you want to help Ginja to continue for another year, keeping it free and available to everyone, you can become "Ginja's friend".
Bulgy's Friends
Bulgy's friends are those who:
- they have already used the contents for free and want other children, families and schools to have access too, in a kind of "pay-it-forward";
- want to keep Bulgy free and non-commercial for everyone to access;
- they want to spread hope and the message that money can't buy joy.
What we need
We want to make the second season of Bulgy. Season one was about emotional awareness; the second will be about emotion regulation and we believe it will have even better content.
The market value of our work this year was around 70 thousand euros, 50 thousand for the production of content (2h30 of audio and video, 19 songs, 18 manual activities, and 18 groups of conversation suggestions) and 20 thousand for the website (graphic design, programming, computer security).
To continue for another year, we need at least €20,000, which mainly covers the salary of a full-time person. This campaign has two deadlines: September 1st to keep Ginja free and September 28th to make the second season.
- if we reach 20 thousand euros only with donations or gifts until September 1st, we will do the second season of Bulgy and we will continue the free Bulgy for another year;
- if we don't reach 20 thousand euros with just donations and gifts by September 1st, Bulgy will become a paid content, and the contributions of Ginja's friends will finance a number of free places for families or schools that request it;
- if we reach 20 thousand euros by September 28th, we will make the second season of Bulgy;
- if we don't reach 20 thousand euros by September 28th, we won't do the second season of Bulgy and we'll refund all your money.
Other ways to help
The biggest success in a year of work was this community that we built and of which we feel proud. We know the affection everyone has for Bulgy! They can help us in other ways:
- If you have children aged 5-10, use the videos at www.emotionathletes.org, which will be free until September 1st;
- Tell your friends and family about our project;
- Use the PPL sharing tools;
- Follow us on social networks: Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , Twitter , Pinterest ;
- Get in touch if you have other ideas, such as impact measurement, marketing or outreach.
About the author
Team
Our team has a family doctor, two actresses and an engineer. The campaign mainly covers the full-time salary of the engineer, Miguel Morin, to continue making videos and maintaining the site.
Miguel Morin is a social entrepreneur with a degree in information technology (degree from Ecole Polytechnique, Paris ; engineer in artificial intelligence at the Alan Turing Institute , economics ( Doctorate from Columbia University, New York ) and education (postdoc in economics of technologies and interventions from early childhood education at Cambridge University, UK The doctoral thesis looked at the replacement of jobs by computers in recent decades and electricity during the Great Depression.He also has a background in film directing, audio production, and video production.
Previously, he invented, developed, and released Puzzli, a patent-pending "smart toy" to teach children to read. He also invented several toys for children that he published on Thingiverse .
You can find out more about the team on the Ginja website .
Impact
In a year of Ginja's work, we achieved the following impact:
- 1,000 families who used the videos
-
250 educators
-
23 schools
-
9,000 children
-
15,000 episode views
Here's a true story about how a child used our videos in his real life:
Once upon a time, there was a 4-year old boy with leukemia. He went every month to the hospital to get a chimiotherapy injection. He felt afraid of needles and used to shout and thrown himself on the floor in the clinic when the time came. Then he saw episode 8, where Bulgy teaches that although we cannot change facts, we can always choose our behavior. At the next appointment, he breathed deeply, said "I can choose", and remained seated without moving during the needle prick. He looked proudly at his mother and asked, "I was brave, wasn't I?" The mother became very emotional and nodded agreement. The nurses said that he looked like a different child. The next month, he also acted bravely. Even the doctor at the appointment noticed the difference and asked the mother, "The boy has grown and changed a lot, what happened?"
Budget and due dates
The tangible cost of production in terms of material and expenses is low, around 2,000 euros. Most of the cost is a person's full-time salary.
For money to enter into a company, the company needs to invoice. A company producing invoices in Portugal requires organized accounting (123 euros per month) and a managing partner, who requires at least the minimum wage (665 euros per month), which requires social security (156.75 euros per month) and work insurance (70 euros ). For one year, the administrative costs are €11,407. To bill this, we have to charge VAT, which adds 23%, and PPL commissions of 9.225% (5% platform and 2.5% payment processing, plus VAT).
Although 20 thousand euros seems high for Portugal, if we don't manage to raise that amount, it makes little sense for us to continue operating in Portugal, and we'll try to go abroad and make the series in other languages. Miguel is 37 years old, has three masters and a doctorate, and already receiving the minimum wage will be a sacrifice he makes for the future of the project, but only if the project has a future.
On the one hand, we have many testimonies and true stories about how Ginja is changing children's lives and that encourage us to keep going. On the other hand, we haven't asked our audience for money yet, and we feel it's fair to ask for a contribution before we decide to prioritize foreign languages.
Our objective is to understand if the benefits of Ginja for our audience justify the costs we have, and these costs are 20 thousand euros. That's why we chose this amount with "all or nothing": if we don't manage to raise it, we'll refund your money in full. Even if we don't manage to raise 20 thousand euros, this will already be a success and helps Ginja's project to move forward and out of Portugal.
Salary for a full-time person: €12,000
Accounting costs: €1,476
Material and production costs: €1,284
Subtotal: €14,760
VAT: €3,395
PPL and payment commissions: €1,845
Total: €20,000
Images
Miguel Morin
Obrigado a todos os que já
Obrigado a todos os que já contribuíram! A nossa campanha só tem mais 10 dias e por isso pedimos a vós, seguidores e apoiantes que sabem melhor que ninguém o valor educativo do Ginja, para divulgarem junto de pessoas como vós que também valorizam a saúde mental e desenvolvimento emocional. Muito obrigado!
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