Games for Global Education 

NEW: In the June 2005 edition of the Development Education Journal, NetAid’s Benjamin Stokes reports on the potential of “serious games” to teach global citizenship. Find out how digital games can help educators fight global poverty >>
(The Development Education Association considers this journal, published by Trentham Books, to be its flagship publication.)

NetAid's current work in games for global citizenship (see below) is rooted in two past projects.  The first is a classroom board game developed in 2002 called NetAid World Class.  In the board game, students ages ten and older take on the identity of a real child living in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu—the site of a NetAid World Schoolhouse project—and confront the obstacles that often keep poor children out of school. In 2002-2003, in collaboration with youth-serving groups like Teach For America, City Year, Citizen Schools and the Partnership for After-School Education, NetAid World Class reached over 40,000 students across the U.S.  A downloadable version of the game was released in 2005 for free use by educators worldwide.

NetAid's second game launched in early 2004, when NetAid and Cisco Systems partnered to create the Peter Packet game and challenge. The game invites students to help Peter fight global poverty over the Internet. Characters in the background story are drawn from NetAid World Schoolhouse projects in Haiti, Zimbabwe and India.  At its launch, the game also offered a ten-day online challenge.  In this portion, students had the opportunity to compete for points by raising real-world awareness and funds in one of the first known examples of online service learning.  Although the challenge has ended, the game itself is still available for free at www.peterpacket.org.

NetAid's latest game (see below) is connected to our leadership role in the Serious Games movement.  Less than two years ago, NetAid co-founded Games For Change (G4C) to promote the use of digital games for social change.  Today, G4C acts as an international hub to help organizations network and develop videogame projects to advance their social missions.  Members of G4C represent hundreds of non-profit organizations and their partners in the games industry, academia, local and state governments, foundations, the UN and artists.  The group has already hosted a national conference, built a volunteer corps and developed a vibrant online community.  For the latest news on G4C, check out www.seriousgames.org/gamesforchange.