Giving Kids a Playful Head Start 

A global pandemic, stressed-out parents, digital overload, and heightened expectations are just a few of the mounting challenges making childhood increasingly stressful—not only for children but also for parents and teachers. Kavindya Thennakoon co-founded Tilli, an award-winning social-emotional learning platform designed for young children, to bring back the joy of childhood with learning and play.

Tilli integrates playful learning, behavioural sciences, and data-driven insights to foster lifelong behavioural changes in both children and their caregivers. The platform’s mission is to equip every child with the skills, coping strategies, and mindsets necessary to thrive by the time they reach their 10th birthday. 

Kavindya, a teacher by profession, was inspired to build a learning platform that allowed children to develop foundational skills such as the ability to be creative, think critically, and develop metacognition and empathy, based on the pivotal changes that occur neurologically before the age of 10 in children.

Two years ago when young children returned to school after almost two years of remote learning, Kavindya made the grim realisation that certain members of a Grade 2 classroom she was working with, weren’t able to climb a flight of stairs or use a restroom. She recalls this memory as one that solidified the importance of her work in developing technology that inculcates the social-emotional skills of young kids. 

Tilli, a Gamified Social-Emotional Learning platform for 5-10-year-olds, enables children to have meaningful conversations with their parents and teachers. Surprisingly enough, the concept of Tilli had been in the works for years and piloted just three months before remote learning came into force in Sri Lanka. 

In just 11 months since its launch, Tilli has reached over 15,000 learners, garnered more than 5,000 downloads, and is now utilized across 40+ countries, including Sri Lanka, India, the US and Canada. Additionally, Tilli is collaborating with UNICEF and Save the Children to provide free access and expand its network of Sri Lankan schools.