Frugal Innovation Hub & eCoins Team Up to Launch Recycling App for Children in Central America

Each year, 11 million metric tons of plastic enter our oceans, adding to the estimated 200 million metric tons already circulating in marine environments. Plastic has been found in more than 60% of all seabird species and 100% of sea turtle species. It is not unknown that our world currently faces a climate crisis, and the demand for knowledge regarding ecological sustainability is on the rise. Santa Clara University’s Frugal Innovation Hub, partnered with eCoins, a social enterprise based in Central America, to create a digital mobile phone and web application that teaches young children the importance and logistics of recycling. Principal Investigator, Dr. Silvia Figueira worked with Director of Programs, Allan A. Báez Morales and the help of three Computer Science and Engineering graduate students, Tanmay Singla, M.S. ’24, Atharva Viraj Kukade, M.S. ’23, and Gautam Chitnis, M.S. ’23, to build a creative and engaging game for the children. To promote recycling initiatives, the game demonstrates how to prevent plastic, glass, and cartons from reaching the ocean. It also teaches children that recyclable items must be clean, dry, and properly separated for disposal. As kids play the eCoins game, they can earn eCoins (points) that their parents can later redeem for movie tickets, restaurant meals, and other fun activities.

SCU School of Engineering’s Frugal Innovation Hub (FIH) aims to engage students and faculty in collaborative design to implement sustainable, community-driven solutions that address critical social challenges in underserved communities, both locally and globally. The Global Digital Transformation Clinic (GDT Clinic) is a program of the FIH dedicated to supporting community-based organizations in low-resource settings by integrating technology through mobile and web applications. Working closely with partner organizations like eCoins, the GDT Clinic evaluates their digital needs and capabilities and identifies frugal technologies to develop digital tools to meet them. eCoins was inspired to collaborate with the FIH for a multitude of reasons. Primarily, they were intrigued by the FIH’s mission to promote the use of technology for social good. Additionally, they were interested in the potential outreach of the project in Central America. This specific FIH team consisted of multiple international graduate students, working within the United States, to curate an app for children in Central America. This idea of global interdependence enhances the sharing of technological innovations and practices. Lastly, they wanted to work with the FIH because of its noble reputation and its 12 years of experience developing digital technologies. 

FIH was intrigued to partner with eCoins because they enjoyed the possibility of reaching out to a large audience in Central America about a very sensitive topic—recycling and climate change. They were excited to engage students in a meaningful project. Often, students are not considering social justice within their work, and are more focused on developing their technical skills for their resume. However, the type of project FIH engages students in uniquely fuses both possibilities. Students were able to develop their technical and soft skills while also developing a challenging app with great humanitarian impact. FIH is able to incorporate empathy, and social justice into a software-based project. Allan said it best, "Technology is a powerful tool that facilitates social change, but at the end of the day, it is the way that we design technology for the people that will determine its impact and how it will change the world.”

eCoins followed a unique development process. The team believes the most important part of this process was the high level of engagement the team had. Each week, there was a meeting with the partner organizations, app designers, animators, and funders. The German International Cooperation Society (GIZ) funded the eCoins project. Since the focus of the FIH is frugal development, some technical roadblocks had to be overcome to ensure a robust yet affordable digital application. One challenge was that the software required for designing an app like this could consume a large amount of cellular data. Because many areas in Central America have limited connectivity, the team had to creatively design and pick a technology that did not consume too much bandwidth but still could run animations and an introductory video. 

Another challenge was testing the app. How do they test an app on an audience that they do not have access to? Therefore, the team needed to create remote User Experience (UX) focus groups with children from schools in Costa Rica and incorporate feedback from children in the area, including high school students attending SCU's Summer Engineering Seminars. When feedback was obtained, new iterations of the app were created. Inevitably, this process can take some time. There were also third-party corporations involved in the development process, so each iteration had to ensure it met the specifications and requirements of these third parties so that it could be properly maintained and available for download on the Google Play and App Store. Even with all these challenges, the team was still able to produce an incredible product that is available for download in countries all over the world in about one academic year, an incredible achievement! 

Measuring success for this project looks different for everyone involved. For the stakeholders, success meant engagement with eCoins users and the impact of the app. They wanted to see how many children were engaging with the product and the data associated with their engagement, such as age, gender, and location. So far, 760 users have played the game, and 20,242 eCoins have been earned. The eCoins earned are equivalent to 2,000 plastic bottles that did not reach the sea. For eCoins, they were interested in increasing logins to the program. However, from the academic perspective of the FIH, success was measured through a service-learning experience. FIH wanted to provide students with a real-world project and an opportunity to expand their technical knowledge and soft skills. Building a mobile phone application from scratch is an incredible challenge, and this team faced this project with optimism and a great deal of resilience. From a social justice perspective, the simple experience of having a child in another country use their product is fulfilling enough. There are few things as powerful as technology that can generate such an immediate impact. For the team, if five children have used the app and made a more conscious effort to recycle, it is considered a success. 

Sometimes we believe technology is the solution. Most of the time, technology is the tool to reach a solution. For all of these projects, without a humane or social component, it does not matter how much cutting-edge technology you put out there. If people do not feel comfortable, do not know how, or do not trust the technology, they will not use it. One of the team’s biggest takeaways from the project is that they do not know what the impact will be on the children playing these games. However, they are making their contribution by putting the idea in their heads, and hopefully, when the time comes, the children will make the right decision and recycle. 

For anybody looking to get involved with the Frugal Innovation Hub, they can contact Allan, or check out their website to learn more about the work they do. It is important to note that they do not only work with Santa Clara Engineering students, but they also do work involving students with community-based organizations across many different disciplines. Want to play the eCoins game? Click here