[P4K] NonProfit TImes spotlights P4K, Tempest & Ayiti games
The NonProfit Times posted a recent article by Michele Donohue entitled "Philanthropy Games By And For Kids And Donors" which spotlights our Playing 4 Keeps (P4K) program along with the release of the game Tempest in Crescent City.
Read the article below or on their site here.
Poverty in Haiti, fumbling rescue efforts during Hurricane Katrina, medical racism against prisoners are topics that are barely thought about by teenagers.But Brooklyn teens thought that these sensitive, complex issues needed exposure, and create games to do just that.
"We give them free reign to decide what topic they want to pick, and they inevitably pick the most difficult topics you could imagine," said Barry Joseph, director of the Online Leadership Program at Global Kids, a New York-based nonprofit that teaches urban youth how to develop and create online games that highlight social issues. The nonprofit's Playing 4 Keeps after school program has kids meeting twice a week after school to talk about global topics and develop a social game. "You have to figure out how to generalize [the issue], so it works in the game context, without trivializing it," said Joseph.
Students at South Shore High School developed Ayiti The Cost of Life with Gamelab, a New York City based game development company, during the 2005/2006 school year that has been played more than 1.5 million times since its launch. During the 2006/2007 school year the students at South Shore decided to create a game in Teen Second Life called CONSENT!, which breaks down six decades of medical racism geared toward African-American male prisoners into three sections."It helps them view themselves as having an important role in society and help them strategize what that role might look like, whether it’s something connected to international justice or human rights work, or just helping them to stay on the straight and narrow to go to college and get an education," said Joseph, who pointed out that more than 90 percent of participating students graduate high school and go on to college.
Students at Canarsie High School worked with game developers Digital Creations during the 2007/2008 school year to develop the Web based game Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City, which was released at http://tempestincrescentcity.ning.com/.
Global Kids recently received a grant from the AMD Foundation, the newly created charitable arm of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. "We have a tremendous opportunity to harness the passion that kids have for the gaming while teaching the skills they need to be successful in our 21st Century digital economy," stated Dirk Meyer, AMD president and chief operating officer in a press release.
The AMD Changing the Game initiative grants will benefit nonprofits teaching children how to create social issue games. Global Kids, Girlstart in Austin, Texas, Institute for Urban Game Design in Washington, D.C., and The Kenneth Lafferty Hess Family Charitable Foundation’s Science Buddies program based in Carmel, Calif., were the nonprofits chosen for Changing the Game's first year.
