For this post I chose an interactive game called Breakaway that was designed in Hebron and Palestine in 2012. to promote gender equality. It uses soccer, or the concept of team to promote making healthy decisions, dealing with real life challenges like peer pressure and develops leaderships skills. It uses what known as a culturally sensitive approach. Research done in 2013 proves that Breakaway is an effective "transformative" tool to address the problem of violence against women and girls. The mission statement says something to the effect that this interactive simulation uses soccer as a "global" language to educate boys and girls worldwide on gender equality. It can be translated in four languages, English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Actually playing the game is something else entirely. Maybe because I am not video game savvy, I found it extremely difficult to navigate. I was able to pass and shoot but moving on defense of offense was very challenging. I appreciated the story lines which had different scenarios based on responses and I can see where this can be used to teach diversity, and assist with complex decision making. I can also see, after reading the facilitators guide how useful this can be as tool to deter violence against women, teach elements of cultural acceptance and competency and foster and develop leadership skills.
Having training experience I can definitely see myself facilitating this training as long as I didn't have to actually play the game...
