In 2017, the Feed the Monster app was rolled out in Syria to support refugee children to read and write in Arabic.
Six years later, it is the newest tool to inspire young residents of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory to learn the endangered language of Warumungu.
It is estimated that 2.4 million Syrian children, or half of the country's school-aged population, does not attend school. As a result, innovation has been critical in supporting children — caught in 12 years of crisis — to develop literacy skills.
In 2015, Feed the Monster emerged from a Norwegian government competition seeking smartphone applications as a direct response to this challenge.
The application teaches children simple sounds, characters and words in a language where they have some familiarity. As they progress through the levels, they have the incentive to grow their cartoon monster from an egg to an impressive beast.
Following its rollout in Syria, international education charity Curious Learning has taken custodianship of the application, supporting its development in more than 50 languages.
For Creesen Naicker, the charity's vice-president, the application strikes a balance between education and fun.
"Feed the monster is something between the way you learned how to read as a child, and one of those highly addictive games," he said.
"It splits the difference perfectly to keep a child engaged while teaching them a fundamentally important skill."
The game is free and its code is open source, meaning that it can be modified for any language.
This set-up has enabled Curious Learning's three-way partnership with the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation (ALNF) and the Papulu Apparr-Kari Aboriginal Corporation in Tennant Creek to drive the Warumungu version of the app.
With only 389 Warumungu speakers in the Northern Territory, there is an urgency to support the application's success.
"This is just an incredible example of where it was probably never going to be justified to build an app specifically for some of the languages … in Australia," Mr Naicker said.
"But by doing this as a global effort, with a global mission, it has been done.
"The idea that more children are going to speak languages that are very important to their cultural heritage is incredibly encouraging for me."
Creating a platform
In 2019, a fortuitous trip to Boston by ALNF programs director Eric Brace to visit Curious Learning proved to be a turning point in bringing Feed the Monster to Australia.
Originally motivated to better understand how the app could assist with the foundation's refugee education program, Mr Brace assessed that the app could be integrated with its Living First Language Platform: a program designed to curate, collect and teach First Nations languages.
"I quickly discovered that … they structured their recordings and their language assets…the same way that we structured all the recordings on the platform," Mr Brace said.
"The process of utilising all that lovely information that communities had curated and putting it into an interactive, fun game that supports literacy … was just seamless."
Mr Brace has since worked closely with Curious Learning to tackle coding challenges while supporting the rollout of the game in Erub, Pitjantjajara and Warumungu through the Living First Language Platform.
In March this year, ALNF alongside Papulu Apparr-Kari launched the Warumungu version of Feed the Monster, providing Mr Brace with great hopes for the future.
"If this can grow language … so that children can share language with their parents and parents can share language with their children … that would be amazing," Mr Brace said.
Working with community
Now that the Warumungu version of the app has been launched, the team at Papulu Apparr-Kari in Tennant Creek has been busy working to support its rollout at the town's primary school, and encouraging parents and children to use it.
The launch comes after a decades-long effort by Tennant Creek elders to ensure the language is documented and preserved.
Karan Hayward, CEO of the Papulu Apparr-Kari Aboriginal Corporation, is delighted to celebrate this legacy, especially the work of elder and language expert Mrs Nixon.
Mrs Nixon was instrumental in sharing the phonetics of Warumungu and ensuring they remained documented for future generations.
The elder's voice now lives on in the Feed the Monster app.
"To actually have this now developed and still be hearing her voice and her dream of ensuring that the Warumungu language stayed strong — that's the biggest thing," Ms Hayward said.
The Warumungu Feed the Monster application, called Arranji yukurnukku jinsta, is being driven by a team of young Indigenous communication and tech enthusiasts including Alyne Fry-Croydon, Jordan Gillard and Lachlan Dunemann.
Mr Dunemann is amazed by how the application has progressed.
"It's gone from pen and paper to the Google app store," he said.
"It's just crazy to think that something from ages ago is now worldwide."
Mr Gillard, one of the app's multimedia specialists, has enjoyed seeing children speak the language "properly".
"Most of the time when we record … the elders, they miss certain key words in the language or they just like to shorten it," he said.
"What this app does is show you that this is the right way of how you speak it throughout the communities."
Inspiring the next generation of speakers
It is now up to the likes of nine-year-old Maliyah Peace to embrace the game and inspire other friends to try out the app.
In addition to the satisfaction of seeing her monster start "standing" up, Maliyah is also relishing the opportunity to connect with the language of Tennant Creek elders.
"It makes me feel really good being able to speak my elders' language, not really knowing how to speak it, but learning how to speak it," she said.
Maliyah's mum, Bidia woman Mahlie Fry, hopes the app gives her daughter an opportunity that she never had.
"I grew up here … and just hearing my kids being able to speak [the language] … it's very uplifting," Ms Fry said.
"It makes me feel good as a parent as well."
