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Games for Change (G4C) provides support, visibility and shared resources to organizations and individuals using digital games for social change. This is the primary community of practice for those interested in making digital games about the most pressing issues of our day, from poverty to race and the environment. We are the social change/social issues branch of the Serious Games Initiative.

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Creating Games About Poverty in Haiti

Posted by Hsing Wei on 12-02-06

Can video games designed by kids create the next generation of activists against poverty?

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Kids in Playing 4 Keeps, an after-school program run by a non-profit citizenship education organization, Global Kids, recently launched their own video game creation, Ayiti: The Cost of Life.  As the head of a rural Haiti family, the player must figure out how to attain happiness, money, health and education with extremely limited resources.  The director of Global Kids Online leadership program observed, “When you make a video game, you are making a model of a system.  And to make a model of a system means you have to understand the constituent parts of that system and how they inter-relate. What better way to motivate young people to learn about a real-world issue?”  The game is freely available and accompanied by workshops, lesson plans, and other materials, including the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and a map of Haiti.