Respect the environment, properly dispose of waste, eat healthy and in season and a thousand other things: environmental education is something that you learn from an early age and do all those things concretely and in everyday life, as simple “normal” gestures, it is the best way to raise truly green children
It is also true, on the other hand, that our puppies are the so-called ” digital natives “, that is, those who “put an iPad in their hands” and do things to you that we humans and old adults could not even imagine. How then to combine business with pleasure? That is, how to take advantage of those minutes (because you have to deal with minutes!) In which our children have a smartphone or tablet in their hands to give them a life lesson ?
Katrin Ann Orbeta and Vincenzo Merenda , founders of Mash & Co , an innovative start-up born in 2015 that deals with the creation of interactive content for children, thought about it. Their project, the “Mash & Co” app , aims to introduce social and environmental issues, complete with interactive animated cartoons for preschoolers.
“The idea was born above all from a need of Katrin Ann Orbeta, co-founder with me of this project. In practice we have put together our experiences: she comes from the Philippines and having a sort of double cultural identity (Filipino and Italian by adoption), she felt the need to use a means of entertainment, to convey an important environmental issue but not only”, tells us Vincenzo Merenda, graphic designer and CEO of Mash & Co
And so Vincenzo, 29, and Orbeta, 30, invented the story of friendship between Mash , a mushroom, and Periwinkle , a snail, embark on a journey in search of the water that has suddenly disappeared from the forest. Through interactive cartoons and mini games, the little ones learn the values of sharing, friendship and respect for nature by moving forward or backward in various scenes. Parents have the opportunity to be an integral part of the child’s experience process and to follow their progress through a specific panel.
The application, downloadable from the App store and from the Windows Phone store, is defined as a ” transmedia project ” aimed at transmitting the values of sharing and issues such as awareness through experience, discovery, logic, play and narration. ecological. Furthermore, there is no text or off-screen voices: everything is based on metalinguistic communication to transmit values and topics related to the environment, renewable energies, sharing and friendship.
In short, a great way to spend that time that we allow our children to hold an electronic device in their hands. An app dedicated to environmental education, but still an app. Once the tablet is turned off, remember that there is no better teacher than nature itself!
