Peyi Project

What is the Peyi project? 

Peyi is a project to create a dynamic children’s book and an accompanying mobile app that teaches children about life in African countries in a non-traditional way.

Peyi gives children a different view of modern life in African countries, aside from the images of poverty, disease, human right's abuses, war, and safari animals they see on most TV/news coverage of the continent.

The Peyi children’s book spotlights 7 countries in Africa, and the app extends the book by presenting the sights, sounds, music, pictures, video clips and quizzes for those 7 countries in a fun and extremely interactive manner.

What’s in the book?

• A chapter for each of the countries in the project 
• An illustrated story or fable from the country at the start of the chapter 
• Scannable 2D barcodes placed throughout the book that link to multimedia material related to that country (see 2D Barcode example below)  
• Culture: including food, music, fashion, languages, religions, diversity
• Entertainment - festivals, celebrations, sports, kids games
• Daily life - mostly modern urban life, some rural life, fun facts
• Nature - fauna, flora, climate, environment, geography
• Business - daily commerce, tourism, stores, restaurants, industries, technology

2D Barcode Example

App Features 

• Sample audio of the languages in each country 
• Pictures, videos, and audio of life and culture in that country
• Project pictures (also found in the book) of maps, flags, architecture, dishes, flora, fauna, shopping malls, beaches, currency and much more
• Links to other online materials such as tourism books, children’s recipe websites, language learning courses, history programs, etc. 
• Quizzes  - fun and interactive quizzes that test what you have learned
• Barcode scanner that allows for the scanning of the QR codes found throughout the book.  Scanning a barcode leads to more multimedia content
• Simple and intuitive user interface.  Although the app contains a great deal of content, the user interface is easy to navigate and obscures the overwhelming volume of data and information
• Multimedia Content - links to original content, as well as royalty free online content
• Ad Hoc Updates - unlike a printed book, once the app is published, its content can be updated and delivered to the end user on the fly

Sections in the App
Each section of the app contains multimedia content appropriate for that section (e.g.  the music section contains audio and/or video).  These are the sections in the app common to all countries:

The aim of Peyi is not to paint a rosy picture and pretend that there aren’t major problems throughout the continent, rather, it is to show there is a lot more to Africa than the war, famine, corruption, roaming wildlife, disease, primitivism, and poverty that they are accustomed to hearing and reading about.

Rewards

Samples of the cool Playing Cards!!!

Who are we? 

We love Africa!  We love passing knowledge to a young audience!  Our project team (which includes my niece Michi, who's voice you heard in the project video), consists of individuals who have spent a significant amount of time in many different African countries, Europe, and of course the United States.  

As the developer of the app, and in my own experience I have found that the US media, and even some of the public school systems portray an incomplete version of life in modern Africa to the American youth. As a result there is a knowledge gap and a general lack of interest in Africa, which is prevalent across different races, religions, and even economic backgrounds throughout the US.  Our Peyi project team members have had similar experiences, and we all share a passion for educating children, and presenting a more complete view of the world to the youth in the US and throughout world. The Peyi project is our way of making a small but meaningful contribution to that end.

Peyi is the word for "countries" in the Haitian Kreyòl language. It is representative of one of the main points of this project, which is to teach young people about the uniqueness of some of the individual countries that make up the African continent.