| Friday, June 29, 2007 |
| Experience Life as a 3rd World Famer |
Imagine. You're a farmer who has vital choices to make about the crops you plant each season. You know that the success or failure of the decisions you make will determine whether your family will eat. But each year, the bad harvests, crop-eating insects, sickness and other factors out of your control, push your household further into the downward spiral of poverty.
Yeah, sounds tough. But it's hard to fully understand what that must feel like, and how you would act in such a situation. One of our simulations, Monsoon, that Helen has helped run as part of a poverty course, gives you a glimpse of a farmer's life in rural India. If you are in HK, or you can get 30+ people together, you might like have a go at this game (see Tear Australia)
For those who won't be playing Monsoon in the near future, you might prefer to check out
3rd World Famer, a similar game online that you can play on your own. It's part of a new, growing game genre called serious games, that aim to challenge and educate. Anyone can have a go, and with a spare 15 minutes or so you too can enter in and take a glimpse at how this farmer, and others like him, lives.
I won't give the plot away, but I will say that I shocked myself through some of the decisions I made during the game, when (virtual) desperate poverty threatened to kill my family members!Labels: Life-experience |
posted by Mike & Helen @ 5:59 PM   |
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