Gamification for Environmental Sustainability

Climate anxiety is currently one of the most pressing problems affecting youth. At the same time, young people see protecting the environment and fighting climate change (34%) as their top priorities in the latest Eurobarometer on Youth report. Both the climate prioritization and climate anxiety underline the importance to increase our efforts for environmental and sustainability issues and address them through innovative and practical approaches that bring solutions, instead of amplifying the problem or increasing the hype. At the same time, many youth are now distancing from climate action to some destructions caused by climate groups. Therefore, youth workers are needed to help regain and retain the interest of young people in the issues of climate, environment, and sustainability, and to ensure the continuous and positive involvement of young people in climate-related activities. For this purpose, we decided to use an innovative methodology/learning approach which is gamification and game-based learning, especially Board Games. This stimulating and innovative approach would enable the exploration of the engagement strategies and mechanisms inherent in the dynamics of board games, and the potential to infuse them with significant educational purposes through purposeful play. By doing so, these games can become powerful tools for increasing awareness, building a sense of initiative, driving solidarity, and doing activities for the environment & and sustainability. As Diane Ackerman says “Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning”. Hence, our training for 30 participants from Austria, Croatia, Czechia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. with the support of ERASMUS+ of the European Union, aims to provide youth workers with a more comprehensive approach, namely Purpursful Play, as a pragmatic and innovative approach that can tackle several youth issues on the local level.​ In order to maximize learning outcomes, interculturality and intersectionality play a key role in the program of the training.

Objectives
1. Exploring board games as an inclusive, stimulating, and engaging method in youth work, focusing on its multiple benefits including socialisation, learning, and fun and its power in shaping young people’s learning, social engagement and personal growth.
2. Enhancing participants’ transversal competencies necessary for working with young people and their role in tackling youth issues such as climate anxiety and the reluctance to climate action.
3. Equipping youth workers with the knowledge and skills necessary for designing and implementing board games with educational purposes, especially on the environment & sustainability.
4. Designing and testing a collection of educational board games intended for use in youth work.
5. Establishing a digital library of printable board games, as a resource for youth organizations and youth workers to enhance their future youth activities while simultaneously engaging them in an activity they enjoy.

Training course is mostly for youth workers, teachers, leaders, volunteers or for everybody who are interested in the topic, want to travel, learn and meet new people and cultures from the age of 20+.