Blog Action Day: Poverty is Child's Play: Games as Tools for Learning

Unless you’ve actually “been there, done that,” it’s difficult to know what it’s like to be someone living daily in poverty. While reading and talking about it can be really useful, sometimes it’s more powerful to “experience” it through tools like games. Games can be an especially effective and meaningful strategy with youth. Here are a few games (most online) that try to help players get a better sense of what it’s like to walk a mile in another’s place.



Ayiti: The Cost of Life
Ayiti explores the question: “What is it like to live in poverty, struggling every day to stay healthy, keep out of debt, and get educated?” In this complex role-playing game, players are in charge of determining what happens to a family of 5 in Ayiti. They must try to keep everyone healthy, while helping them get as much education as possible and make enough money to survive and thrive. The player has 4 years (divided into 16 seasons) to try to succeed, and has to choose a “strategy” at the beginning: health, education, happiness or money. Who will work, rest, go to school, volunteer, get health care? How will it be paid for? Each choice has a consequence (some positive, some negative). The game is somewhat complicated, with a variety of choices and actions necessary for each season. There are a couple of lesson plans that accompany the game, to help participants process their experience and/or think critically about the issues.


Darfur is Dying
What’s it like to try to survive in a refugee camp? In Darfur is Dying players take on the role of a Darfurian who tries to complete a variety of tasks in order to help his/her community survive, including foraging for water, obtaining food, building shelter and staying healthy. If a player can do all this and survive -- surviving attack, escaping capture, etc. – then s/he's “won.” Mousing over question marks scattered throughout the camp provides data about what life is like in a refugee camp. The game offers additional information about the plight of Darfurians in Sudan and suggests ways to help.


A Seat at the Table
This game is from Oxfam. Participants choose a character, are given a basic scenario, and then are asked to make choices, based on the life and options available for that character. For example, one character is a widow with three children, living in Mozambique, and trying to grow crops on a small plot of land. She has to make choices such as whether to take her sick child to the doctor, whether to allow an investor to lease her land (the only thing of value she owns), whether to move to the city, etc. Each choice comes with a (positive or negative) consequence. There are also little factoids about the culture and circumstances of the characters.


Third World Farmer
For this game, players manage a farm in Africa and must make decisions that will determine whether their family prospers…or starves. Players decide what kinds of crops to plant and how many, whether to buy tools and other improvements and how to deal with education, illness, poor harvests and other challenges.


World Class “Grab Bag” Game
If you don’t have access to a computer, or would rather your students have a more realistic experience, consider Net Aid’s role-playing game, which focuses on the struggles many children face in trying to get an education. All the playing pieces and instructions are in downloadable (PDF) format. In this game, students become a child from Tamil Nadu in India, each of whom has a dream for their career. The game follows the challenges children face (parents out of work, illness or disability, loss of teacher (or no teacher at all), etc., in trying to earn enough years of education to realize their dream jobs.