The woman behind a board game dreamt up over a bowl of rice is up for an international award - but needs support to be in with a chance.

Inventor of financial literacy board game bMoneywize, Arinola Araba, 50, of Broad Street, came up with the idea after her daughter could not stop cooking Nigerian dish jollof rice whenever her friends visited.

Arinola told the Post: “I said, ‘you’re wasting money’, and thought, ‘how can I go about talking to young people about managing money in a fun way, so I came up with the game.”

Now Arinola has been shortlisted from among more than 500 projects for a Reimagine Education award which if she wins could net her business a $50k prize.

But to do that Arinola needs to deliver a pitch to the competitions’ judges - in the United States.

Now she hopes to raise the money needed to get her there with support from the public.

Commenting on what winning the award would mean to her, she said: “This award is so exciting.

“First of all it brings more realisation of my dream to make it nationally.

“A lot of people don’t really know how money works so it is about reaching out to people who might have been forgotten.

“My goal is for the game to be translated.”

She added: “Barking and Dagenham gets so much bad press so it’s about time we had something good come out of the borough.”

Arinola hopes to raise £2.5k to cover her travel and hotel expenses in time for the judging on Monday, December 5.

She pledges to give away ten copies of her game to Post readers.

To donate visit www.paypal.me/bMoneyWize