Game Design
& Designing a Facilitation Kit
Beyond Barriers- a board game
BRIEF: Designing a Facilitation Kit to inform children about their rights as children and the violations they might face in their vicinity.
BACKGROUND: Thoughtshop Foundation (TF) is a non profit organization based in Kolkata, India. TF was formed out of sheer determination and concern for society with the key objective being to educate, motivate and empower for social change. Creating new and effective ways of dealing with social issues is what TF has been striving at.
TF has identified 18 regions in and around the city of Kolkata where they have gathered together children and adolescents and formed independent groups. Every group meets weekly with the children and adolescents of their area. Group visits helps the children to voice out their concerns, share any problem they are facing and strive towards solving them through means of counseling and discussion.
“Beyond Barriers”—the game would be conducted by a facilitator with a maximum of 20 children and adolescents playing this game. It will be played once in a month or two months depending on the other activities the groups have. The objective of this game being to make children more conscious of each other’s behavior, the basic necessary steps to overcome a situation and the qualities required for an individual to help a friend. The essence of game being in making children aware of the Child Right Violation and how as children and adolescents they can deal with it. The facilitators are mainly the group leaders and counsellors who live in the same area as the groups’ participants. This implies that facilitators are aware of the background of the participant as well as the scenario prevalent at their homes.
The game is divided in three sessions:
1. The first game throws a situation on adolescents where the adolescents need to observe the child in picture and identify what the child is going through. Discussions happen on what are the possible reasons as to why the child is behaving so, as depicted in the picture.
2. The second round of game gives the adolescents a set of actions that needs to be arranged in sequence. These set of actions are a step by step guided action in case of an issue specified in the game. The players are free to arrange the actions as long as they have a logical reasoning behind the sequence. The facilitator can intervene and help them arrange it once they have made an attempt.
3. The third game teaches the players, the qualities needed to help a friend using strategies and team building techniques.
Photo Credits: Manasi Kajabaje