About Us
About Us
OUR MISSION
At Better Kids we strive to help you - teachers and parents - support the social and emotional growth of the little humans you care about so deeply. Our social impact venture creates interactive evidence-based digital games and hands-on activities that engage children ages 4 to 8 in learning social emotional skills through play.
With operations in the US, France, and Japan, Better Kids works with the best game designers, art directors, graphic designers, programmers, neuroscientists, educators, and child therapists to create digital games and hands on activities that support children’s emotional growth.
Wisdom: The World of Emotions combines fun interactive digital games, Augmented Reality mindful breathing activities, meditations, and hands-on activities to practice the social emotional skills learned.
Because we believe our inner child needs care throughout our lives, we also provide SEL training to help adults thrive.
Founding team
Ondine Bullot, Founder and CEO
Ondine had two dreams as a 6 year-old: owning a school one day and becoming an entrepreneur.
She spent the first part of her career bolstering her business and finance skills, while nurturing a passion for psychology and languages. After a long recovery from a life-changing accident, she realized technology could allow her to combine both her dreams and impact far more students than she had ever imagined. She founded Better Kids to support children in building a strong emotional foundation from very early on, so they can thrive both academically and socially throughout their lives. She is quadrilingual and multicultural (Franco-American and Swiss) and graduated from HEC Business School. She is also a certified Gyrotonic instructor and loves to teach!
Masahiro Naruse, Art Director
Masahiro is a renowned artist in Japan where he has been in charge of designing the cover of the weekly magazine Shukanshincho (equivalent to the New Yorker), for the past 20 years. He is also a writer and a philosopher and has published several books in Japan.
Read the story of how we met. Visit Masahiro’s website.
PartnersHIPS
Since April 2024, Better Kids partners with Blue Star Families to support the emotional wellness of military families. Blue Star Families supports more than 275,000 military family members through evidence-based programs and resources to empower families to thrive as they serve. Parents in the Blue Star Neighborhood can access a variety of social-emotional learning resources through the Better Kids Neighborhood. Read more about this partnership.
Since 2023, Better Kids partners with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and Save the Children to support the emotional wellbeing of children in Ukraine. Thanks to support from our partners, our app, Wisdom: The World of Emotions has been localized and adpated in Ukrainian language and is now available for free for families, schools, and Digital Learning Centres in Ukraine. Read more about this partnership.
Since November 2022, Better Kids and Bright by Text partner to deliver social emotional learning tips and activities in English and Spanish via Bright by Text’s free text messaging service. Hundreds of thousands of parents and caregivers of children can now access actionable tips, activity ideas to support their children’s social emotional development. Read more about this partnership.
In November 2021, Wisdom: The World of Emotions was selected by Apple Education to become a member of the Education Partner Program (K-12), both in the Foundational Literacies and the Social and Emotional Learning categories. Read more about this partnership.
Since April 2021, Better Kids partners with Noggin and Sparkler on Big Heart World, a new effort focused on early childhood education and social and emotional learning. Big Heart World is a free and publicly available resource that aims to help parents and educators address the pressing social and emotional needs that America’s young children have right now during COVID-19 and to provide action-oriented tools and resources that help grown-ups support children’s healthy social and emotional development. Read the press release.
Since August 2020, Better Kids partners with Panorama Education to provide digital and remote learning-friendly SEL lessons through Panorama’s Playbook. Read the press release. Panorama Education partners with K-12 schools and districts across the country to collect and analyze data about social-emotional learning, school climate, family engagement, and more. With research-backed surveys and a leading technology platform, Panorama helps educators act on data and improve student outcomes. Panorama supports more than 10 million students in 17,000 schools across 49 states, including those in the New York City Department of Education, Dallas ISD, Seattle Public Schools, and San Francisco USD. Visit www.panoramaed.com
NEWS AND Awards
In August 2024, Wisdom: The World of Emotions was selected by Hundred as a Wellbeing in Schools innovation that demonstrates evidence of impact on wellbeing, offers an innovative approach, and shows potential for scaling.
In October 2022, Wisdom: The World of Emotions was highlighted in Apple’s newsroom announcement, sharing how it benefited from Apple experts’ feedback to make significant improvements.
In March 2022, Wisdom: The World of Emotions was featured as App of the Day on the US App Store and recognized as “An immersive story app that takes kids on an adventure through a whimsical world of emotional learning."
In November 2021, a Developer Spotlight interview of our CEO and Founder, Ondine Bullot, was published on the App Store highlighting how Wisdom: The World of Emotions has helped kids develop their social emotional skills.
In October 2021, Better Kids received a ChildTech Technology Award from ImpactUS Ventures and was a finalist in the ChildTech Chile Challenge - Early Childhood Education.
In July 2021, Wisdom: The World of Emotions was nominated as Best Learning Game 2021 finalist by Games For Change, the leading global advocate for the power of games as drivers of social impact.
In November 2020, Better Kids was featured in Forbes as "innovators to watch" for the Whole Child, among "10 invention opportunities in early learning and development that could reignite an equitable start in life".
Since its launch in April 2020, Wisdom: The World of Emotions was featured numerous times by Apple on its App Store in categories such as Apps We Love Right Now, Exciting New Updates, Apps You Need This Week, Made for Kids, Remote Learning for Institutions and Educators, Women-led Companies, and Autism Acceptance Month.
In October 2020, Better Kids participated in Promise Venture Studio’s Show and Tell event, showcasing 9 outstanding innovations in early childhood, focused on transforming wellbeing through social emotional development.
In April 2020, Google cited Wisdom: The World of Emotions as a recommended resource for educators to check in on their students’ emotional well-being during distance learning. Read Google’s blog article.
In January 2020, Wisdom: The World of Emotions was selected to be included in Google’s Chromebook App Hub, an online resource to help educators, administrators and developers work together to learn about curated educational Chromebook apps and activity ideas for schools.
Better Kids was selected by ASU x GSV to present Wisdom SEL pedagogy on April 8-10, 2019 in San Diego, CA. We were honored to be part of the world’s leading education and workforce innovation summit and thrilled to see Social Emotional Learning as the overarching theme of the conference!