Snakes & Ladders Disaster Risk Reduction Game
Description
Neeti has converted the traditional board game of Snakes & Ladders into computer game to address / train young students in various global challenges like disaster risk reduction, climate change, poverty, health & hygiene etc. Gaming provides fun and learn environment and keeps sustained interest of students and youths. It’s a given – educate a child and you can effect change in an entire generation. Moreover, educate the child through play and fun and they’ll learn best.
What we deliver
Customers: Schools (teachers, students) and Parents Schools: have well aware primary stakeholders who are equipped with the basic knowhow of the challenges that face the world in general. Parents: have peace of mind that their children are engaged in playing social impact making games and not violent games that creates psychological disturbances and anti-social behavior.
Whom we deliver
Snakes and Ladder is highly interactive game allowing players to interact with the game as well as choose the correct answers from multiple choices. The player always gets an explanation irrespective of the correctness of the answer making it a very interesting way to learn the basic concepts of the various global issues. Audio and graphical content makes the playing interesting and involvement is high. The player has an option to play against the computer or his/her friends making it flexible to play alone or in a group.
Why is the project unique?
Neeti Solutions firmly believes in Children as “Change agents” who can bring about a positive change in the society when equipped with correct knowledge, social awareness and ability to influence others around them. By using the new age digital media for learning, which children like and prefer this process of change can be accelerated. Children have traditionally been looked upon as incapable of decision making and considered lowest on the ladder in the process of Disaster Management thus making them most vulnerable. This idea of using games to learn on the contrary empowers children leading to a more resilient and prepared community as a whole. Every additional child made aware of the principals of Disaster Management will lead to an increase in the awareness levels of all the stakeholders. The potential of IT/software technology and gaming as tools for creating Disaster Preparedness is virtually untapped. This approach provides for the positive impact of gaming on children. Adaptation of conventional board games and development of new computer based games blended with fun & learn activities for teaching makes this idea unique. This idea, using the gaming platform and computer-based games, can be extended to educate physically challenged children too, who are especially vulnerable during any disaster. During the Bangkok meet “Snakes and Ladders” was appreciated by the staff who had accompanied a group of hearing impaired children from Indonesia. Interacting with them, we learned how the additional component of visuals; aids understanding among these children. This has given Snakes and Ladders an additional advantage to educate oft-neglected children.
Roadmap
Digital Content proliferation is a reality of today’s world and it is widely used in the conventional commercial activity for wider outreach and focused impacts. The issues pertaining to the “Development” sector also need the support of this delivery mechanism to really reinforce the advocacy and awareness generation of issues that affect humanity at large. The world as we know today is increasingly faced with the challenge of handling and disseminating knowledge and skills to harness the same for development. There are subject matter experts on one side of the spectrum and there is a vast pool of resources on the other end, requiring the “consumption” of this knowledge to enable them to perform better for the overall well being of the society. The most cost-effective medium of delivery to bridge this divide would definitely be the “Digital Content” which would make it amenable for multiple deliveries, constant updates and versioning for incremental reference. With ICT rapidly becoming less investment intensive and IT infrastructure becoming available across the world, tools derived from this technology can be harnessed to have a sustained impact on development. As a vision we see ourselves in Providing digital services allowing content and knowledge to be produced, stored, managed, personalized, transmitted, preserved and used reliably, efficiently and at low cost Enabling the mass-individualization of learning experiences, through systems allowing faster acquisition of competences and skills, increased knowledge worker productivity, and more efficient learning processes. Advancements in technology can be put to good use to serve the special needs of challenged children and create an education tool that will work well to impart the basics of Disaster Risk Reduction to them. The other facet in IT sector is that there is hardly any effort to develop IT applications which are socially relevant and useful to communities at large. IT business in India is considered to be of outsourcing in nature. This is paradoxical and much effort is required to change this so that it will address real issues in India as well as other developing countries. Using IT knowledge of Indians for solving problems of India and creating applications that would help Indians is a wonderful opportunity to develop world class tools and methods that people can use worldwide and acknowledge India’s social contribution in IT domain and deal with ‘Digital Divide’ in positive way. It will provide a social platform for IT professionals giving them an opportunity to use technology where it’s most required to bring about a change.
Contact
Neeti Solutions
Dr. Parag Mankeekar
4, Ravindra Society , Sahakar Nagar No II Development Center: 5, Parth, Prabhat Road
Pune, Maharashtra, India
URL/Website – www.neetisolutions.com
