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The Game Help the Guinard family struggle to make ends meet and get ahead in their poverty-stricken homeland, Haiti. In this sometimes tragic and always challenging simulation game, you help the parents, Jean and Marie, and their children, Patrick, Jacqueline, and Yves, make decisions about work, education, community building, personal purchases, and health care that might brighten their future. The Design Ayiti: The Cost of Life was funded by the Microsoft Corporations US Partners in Learning and designed in collaboration with the Global Kids’ Playing 4 Keeps program and a group of students at South Shore High School in Brooklyn, NY. The biggest design challenge was creating a game that realistically and sensitively illuminated the challenges posed by poverty in daily life (specifically, in the pursuit for the global right to an education) but that was still truly enjoyable and satisfying to play. Extending this challenge, it was imperative that the game be replayable such that each session would expose to the player more of the subtleties of the relationships between the different underlying economies. The economies of the game are balanced with such guile that at first the game seems unbeatable. We assure you, though, there are ways to keep your entire family healthy and happy and educated! Global Kids is a nationally recognized leader in using digital media to promote global awareness and youth civic engagement. Global Kids' Ayiti was produced through GK's Playing for Keeps (P4K) program. P4K uses online games as a form of youth media informed by international issues. Gamelab and Global Kids developed an innovative curriculum for engaging youth in the design, development and dissemination of high quality games that have the potential to educate their peers around the world. Playing 4 Keeps is supported by Microsoft's U.S. Partners in Learning Mid-Tier initiative, which funds "pockets of innovation" for increasing digital literacy and career readiness. During the 2005-2006 school year, Global Kids Youth Leaders in the Playing for Keeps program at South Shore High School gained leadership, research, and game design skills while producing this socially conscious online game, Ayiti: The Cost of Life. The youth chose to design a game that focuses on the issue of poverty as an obstacle to education and uses the country of Haiti as a case study. The game and its associated curriculum were released through UNICEF's Child Alert: Haiti website and TakingITGlobal's network of over 170,000 educators worldwide and through TakingITglobal's TIGed. In the year after it was released in October 2006, the game experienced a million plays. For Educators Global Kids developed two workshops with supporting materials for teachers and facilitators around Ayiti: The Cost of Life. Both workshops offer a number of actions for young people who want to make a difference in the real world around poverty. System Requirements Internet browser with Flash Player 8 or higher. Game Resolution: 800 x 600 px.
Gamelab
Global Kids UNICEF Global Kids Playing 4 Keeps Youth Leaders: |     |
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