“Teen Second Life is a space restricted to 13-17 year olds. Beginning in February, 2006, Global Kids has been exploring how to bring a youth development model around global issues into an island within this teen grid. Visit Global Kid in the main grid or the teen grid of Second Life.”
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: Global Kids’ Online Leadership Program
YEAR: 2006
INFO: Online, free
PLAY: http://olpglobalkids.org/second_life/
(Source: http://olpglobalkids.org/second_life/)
“Homeless: It’s No Game was created for my research into the effectiveness of persuasive games that I am undertaking at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University (…). The game is also intended to raise awareness of the situation faced by the homeless.“
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: Wetcoast Games
YEAR: 2006
INFO: Online, free
“InterroBang is a socially-networked, problem-solving game thatprovides missions that are completed in the real world. The missions areinspired by the Four Grand Challenges of the Smithsonian rooted inservice-learning pedagogy and encourage use of Microsoft’s freeeducational tools. In order to play the game, teachers must first register in the Partners In Learning Network where they will find rubrics, teacher forums, educational tools to help complete missions, and techniques to promote civic engagement with service-learning pedagogy.”
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: Nuvana, with Founding Partner Microsoft Partners in Learning, with support from Exploratorium, Learn and Serve America, and ePals.
YEAR: 2010
INFO: Online, free
PLAY: http://playinterrobang.com/
(Source: internationalpeaceandconflict.org)
“Karma Tycoon is an online strategy game in which players solve community problems, such as homelessness, in cities across the US. Players learn the ins and outs of the not-for-profit world as they apply for grants, receive donations and have to manage their budget efficiently. The players begin the game with a grant from the JP Morgan Chase Foundation but then must apply for more grants to help more people. The goal of the game is to teach young people about social entrepreneurship and financial responsibility while they’re also having fun.
The game can be further used as a teaching tool due to the explanations, summaries and definitions built into the game. If you want to learn about what a foundation is or how severe homelessness is in Los Angeles, this game enables you to do just that. In addition, there is an accompanying teacher curricula that educators can use in the classroom to help the students understand the issues addressed in the game. The game and curricula are available free of charge at KarmaTycoon.com”
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: 9mmedia, Do Something
YEAR: 2006
INFO: Online, free
PLAY: http://www.karmatycoon.com/
(Source: gamesforchange.org)
“Literacy levels in poor countries remain shockingly low. Even more challenging is the tension between regional and “world” languages – that economic opportunities are often closed to those literate only in a regional language. In India for example, the value of English is widely recognized by ordinary Indians, and it is the poorest citizens who are lobbying most strongly to expand English teaching. Whereas regular school attendance is far out of reach for those children who have to work for the family in agricultural fields or households, the growing adoption of cellphones in developing countries hold the potential for mobile learning to make English literacy more widely accessible in places and times more convenient than school. The MILLEE: Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies research project, now starting its 6th year, aims to realize this opportunity.
MILLEE takes a scientific approach to the design of immersive, enjoyable, language learning games on cellphones. It draws from theory and best practices in second-language learning. It also draws on the traditional village games that rural children are familiar with. It has won several competitive grants, and seen extensive field tests with rural and urban slums children. We are taking the project to the next level: a controlled field experiment with 800 rural children in India and validation against standardized school tests. The lessons will permit the project to be scaled nationwide and replicated in other developing countries for other languages. The project has been featured in India’s major press, a Canadian public television documentary, and soon, ABC News.“
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: Matthew Kam and team. Founders: MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, National Science Foundation, Qualcomm, Verizon
YEAR: 2009
INFO: Cellphone, free
PLAY: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mattkam/lab/millee.html
(Source: gamesforchange.org)
“People Power is about politics, strategy and social change. As a leader of a popular movement you fight against tough adversaries who control the police, the army and bureaucracy, even the media.The only weapon in your hand is your strategic skill and ingenuity.
People Power is more than a game. It’s an opportunity to join a community of others who want to learn about civil resistance and nonviolent strategies. Everyone can design scenarios and post them on the scenario page, available to the whole community. With this first edition, you are invited to participate in our ‘Open Beta’ phase of development. Play the game, then send us your comments, suggestions, and criticism. You will become part of the team, working to improve the game and make it more useful to more players. On our Forum, you can exchange ideas with other players and scenario writers.“
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: York Zimmerman Inc.
YEAR: 2010
INFO: 10 U$ (possible petition for free copy)
PLAY: http://www.peoplepowergame.com/
(Source: http://www.peoplepowergame.com/)
“A game about fighting global poverty, combined with a money raising challenge. Peter Packet is a superhero who brings life-saving messages to help fight poverty over the Internet. Players help him help kids from Haiti to Zimbabwe to get access to clean drinking water, education and the medicine they need.”
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: Creative Learning Studio at Cisco Systems Inc.
YEAR: 2004
INFO: Online, free
PLAY: http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/netacad/peterpacket2/NewBuild_forweb/default.htm
(Source: socialimpactgames.com)
“PING is aimed at the students of the secondary and third degree. The students become the main characters in the game. They can choose between Jim or Sofia, who, due to certain circumstances, end up on the street and need to find their own path. is an online game made for secondary schools, forming a starting point to discuss the subject ‘poverty’ and what it means to be poor… PING shows that games can help to introduce complex social subjects like poverty in the class room.
The partners of the PING project want to contribute to the social debate encouraging the use of games at school as a tool to open the difficult discussion about poverty.”
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: The King Baudouin Foundation, IBBT, with The Network of European Foundations, the Robert Bosch Stiftung, the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, and Fondation Bernheim.
YEAR: 2010
INFO: Online, free
PLAY: http://www.povertyisnotagame.com/speel-het-spel/speel-het-spel-online/?lang=en
“New Charity Era’s first product is an iPhone app designed to help the population of a poor village in Uganda. Raise the Village allows customers to construct a virtual village from scratch by building huts, schools, crop farms and more. The user also has the ability to buy collection items such as clothing, medical supplies and food. All of these items help contribute to the game play values of mind, health and spirit of the village.
Raise the Village is an iPhone application based on the fun “FarmVille”- style of gaming except instead of raising a farm, you raise a virtual village. In order to grow your village, you must build your village population by buying virtual items such as shoes and food or even bigger items such as a school. If you buy a virtual mosquito net to help your virtual village, you are directly contributing toward a real mosquito net to be delivered to a real village in Uganda.
When we make our deliveries, we track every villager who receives an item. In doing this, we take a picture of each individual villager getting his or her new item and send this picture straight back to the users’ iPhone.”
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: New Charity Era, Intersog
YEAR: 2010
INFO: IPhone, free
PLAY: http://www.raisethevillage.com/
(Source: http://www.raisethevillage.com/what-is-raise-the-village.aspx)
“Real Lives is a unique, interactive life simulation game that enables you to live one of billions of lives in any country in the world. Through statistically accurate events, Real Lives brings to life different cultures, human geography, political systems, economic opportunities, personal decisions, health issues, family issues, schooling, jobs, religions, geography, war, peace, and more!”
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: Educational Simulations
YEAR: 2009
INFO: Online, Free trial. Download Edition $29. CD edition $39. Six-user license+six CDs $199. Lab Pack 30-user license + 30 CDs.$899
PLAY: http://www.educationalsimulations.com/
(Source: http://www.educationalsimulations.com/)
“Global Footprints challenges us to think about how heavily we are treading on the earth and how we might measure, reduce and improve our impact socially and environmentally.
Main Aims: To provide children with essential knowledge and skills to challenge and tackle poverty, injustice and environmental destruction. To incorporate the knowledge and skills necessary for active global citizenship into the social curriculum, particularly through numeracy and literacy activities and initiatives. To explore the impact of Global Footprints in the school context.”
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: Global footprints
YEAR: 2009 ?
INFO: Online, free
PLAY: http://www.globalfootprints.org/active/kids/games/savetheworld.htm
(Source: http://www.globalfootprints.org/)
“Sneaky Snakes - Help sort out things that just aren’t fair. Sneaky Snakes is snakes and ladders with a difference – answer questions to get your counter past the snakes and for the snake to catch your opponent!”
“The player plays a boring game with an unfair opponent. In order to stop the unfairness the player answers questions regarding social justice.”
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: Commissioned by Christian Aid UK
YEAR:
INFO: Online, free
PLAY: http://www.christianaid.org.uk/resources/games/sneakysnakes/snakes.htm
(Source: http://carol-carolrb.blogspot.com/2010/06/christian-aid-website-and-games-to-help.html)
“THE INVISIBLE HAND - THE CHALLENGE FOR A FAIR WORLD, created for children and students aged ten and above, but also for teachers and trainers, was designed to entertain and very quickly involve even users with absolutely no interest in the topic and who are willing to concentrate for only short periods.
The objective of the game is to understand how the international cocoa trade works, firstly according to the unfair rules of the “free” market and the WTO, then according to the rules of the fair trade market. The player must move through the different scenes and overcome the relative obstacles, from the city to the plantations in North Africa, from a cargo ship to a factory producing confectionery, to the headquarters of the WTO; he must gather information, both by finding documents in the field and by listening to the dialogues among and with the various people he meets during the adventures. Using a special SMARTPHONE, the player can intercept, record, film and gather precious information which can be used to tell the whole world about the unfair “trade among the powerful” and the alternatives offered by fair trade.”
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: Koala Games (Italy), RTM (Italy)
YEAR: 2011
INFO: Online, free: accepting donations
PLAY: http://www.theinvisiblehand.it/
(Source: http://www.theinvisiblehand.it/)
”Water is the new oil. according to the UN, shortage of clean water is a root cause of poverty, social instability and even war.
The Riverbed is a first-person interactive experience: part game, part story. According to the UN, shortage of clean water is a root cause of poverty, social instability and even war.
The Riverbed is designed to raise awareness of this looming crisis and help players to better understand the dynamics at work in water scarcity situations. Issues like upstream/downstream, sustainability, conservation and the security dilemma are explored in an interesting and engaging way.”
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: Mary Wharmby
YEAR: 2010
INFO: Online, free
PLAY: http://www.riverbedgame.com/
(Source: http://www.riverbedgame.com/)
“Un juego peligroso” es una herramienta de educación para el desarrollo dirigida a alumnos de segundo ciclo de ESO y Bachillerato. Mediante este juego on-line, los jóvenes y las jóvenes pueden aprender lo que está pasando en el mundo de una forma lúdica y divertida. A partir de la temática base de las relaciones Norte-Sur y de los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio, las preguntas del juego van aportando datos significativos que permiten comprender la situación crítica que vive la Humanidad en ciertos aspectos -pobreza, hambre, analfabetismo, mortalidad evitable, subdesarrollo, deuda externa, deterioro del medio ambiente…-, interiorizar valores solidarios y mover a la acción responsable.”
DEVELOPER/DESIGNER: ONG Manos Unidas
YEAR:
INFO: Online, free
PLAY: http://www.unjocperillos.org/
(Source: http://www.unjuegopeligroso.org/prensa/)
