I call him LáZorro (with an á, damn it!) because of his keen sense of right and wrong. You may know him as Lázaro Fuentes, a venture capitalist who helped make the Lehigh Valley Hispanic Chamber of Commerce a vibrant business voice. What I never knew until today is that he has spent the last seventeen months developing a virtual worlds market for kids, tweens and teens (KT&T).It's called HipChicas.com, a virtual community with a focus on socially conscious, young Latinas, and an "eco-friendly" stance.
HipChicas.com members will create and customize avatars and living spaces, as well as purchase items with virtual currency called Hip Change. Girls can chat in English, Spanish, Portuguese or French, with an automatic translator that displays the appropriate language for each user.
Now I finally know what young kids are doing on computers all the time. I always thought they were reading Molovinsky on Allentown.
Girls learn that their actions directly affect the environment through games and challenges. It definitely has a green focus. Adding plants and cleaning up a habitat, for example, will cause a native endangered species to flourish.
"We felt that there was a need for content that kids would like and parents would approve of," Fuentes said. "It's as if somewhere along the line, someone decided that being hip meant that girls had to dress or act inappropriately, or had to fit into a specific mold and that their only interests are picking hair colors or shopping for clothes. They are far more than that and are looking for content that gets them; a higher level of engagement. These are kids that want to save the world, be in a band and start a blog all in one day."
Though this virtual world is designed from a Latina-centric perspective, HipChicas.com would likely have multi-ethnic appeal, much like Nickelodeon's Dora the Explorer property. "The girls that were five when they first started watching Dora the Explorer in 2000 are thirteen now," Fuentes said. "And they've already had an unprecedented amount of exposure to Latin-themed content."
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