(Pic from Haiti Health)
Well, I've never heard of games like this, but it's pretty fascinating coming across the concept. Via Pienso and Still Haven't Found.
The game comes from GlobalKids and GameLab (with help from Microsoft) who have developed something called Play 4 Keeps, which helps young people create socially conscious games. Some good funky music there as well.
Playing 4 Keeps (P4K) is an innovative youth media project that involves a team of Global Kids youth leaders at South Shore High School in Brooklyn, New York. These young people are learning to develop and produce socially conscious online games, while gaining skills in game design, digital media, leadership, and peer education. Their work has the potential to educate thousands of young people about critical global issues. The program is a collaboration with the award-winning online game design company Gamelab (gamelab.com), with whom the GK Leaders have worked closely in the production of the Ayiti game.
With a generous three-year grant from the Surdna Foundation, P4K was piloted in 2002-2003 and, since then, GK has been able to develop a strong partnership with Gamelab as well as test and refine its curriculum and approach to youth-inspired, youth-led production of socially conscious online games.
In 2005, because of its innovative work in youth-developed online games, Global Kids was fortunate to have been selected as one of eleven organizations supported by Microsoft's Partners in Learning Mid-Tier Initiative, which seeks to identify and encourage "pockets of innovation" for increasing digital literacy and career readiness. Ayiti: The Cost of Life is the first game produced through Microsoft's support.
Amazing stuff, and more on the way or already out there. It looks like I've missed the memo on this.
One could foresee the possibility that games like these could be a way for nonprofits to both educate and create profits for their causes. How about a game about international development based on 'Civilization' or something like that, where you have to help a nation develop, deal with war, natural disaster, famine, poverty, etc., etc. It could be a very interesting and educational game. You could have options to use microfinance, support social enterprises, get government or private aid, and have a multitude of scenarios as a result of your decisions.
Poverty remains a huge issue. I do enjoy your nice thoughts. Just to let you know this: I ran into an exciting book: China and the new world order: how entrepreneurship, globalization, and borderless business are reshaping China and the world, written by the outspoken Chinese journalist George Zhibin Gu. It is a must read, for it has huge hot topics on global business, trade, jobs transfers and politics. You should be a better judge on this book.
In the spirit of games for learning and social change, I have launched a wikispace: http://selearninggames.wikispaces.com.
Selearninggames is a wikispace for social entrepreneurs to make a learning game together that will solve the mystery of nonprofit earned income venture profitability.
What’s the game? It’s making the game!
The meta-patterns that solve the mystery of profitability are hidden in our collective experience. Discovering patterns is what makes learning fun! During the collaborative process of making the game, we will explore our common problems, and common solutions will emerge. Our tacit knowledge (stuff we don’t know that we know) becomes explicit.
As we apply, test and refine together, the most effective set of solutions become the meta-patterns accelerating profitability for our own ventures. These meta-patterns become the design principles of the game we make.
Please join us for fun and profitability! It’s free. You can easily edit pages, upload files, join in our discussion, and help make the game.
Thank you for bringing more attention to our game and the program that developed it.
Barry, Global Kids
While the existing U.S. poverty measure has significant limitations in comparing poverty rates across years or age groups, it is nevertheless a useful indicator of a group among the older population that is clearly experiencing economic privation.
Look at those poor children, they really need the basics like food and water … when are the big countries gonna come up with a solution for poverty i don’t know.
These childrens really need help, All the progressed countries should help peoples like this, then the poverty problem could be resolved, also Media can help these kinds of peoples.
368 very nice sharing, thank you manage your site