The Global Change Game

The Global Change Game is an award winning program which educates people about global issues and empowers them to make decisions on these issues. Participants of all ages and backgrounds enjoy a powerful and personal learning experience which provides an enriched global understanding. The Game develops creative problem solving, critical thinking, teamwork, negotiation, and leadership skills. It shows the participants how people and resources are distributed in the world, how and why peoples' priorities differ, and how global decisions are or can be made.

Played on a colourful hand painted world map the size of a basketball court, the Global Change Game is an action packed three hour workshop with an atmosphere that excites players of all abilities to explore world issues. Most of the 70 participants in each Game represent 100 million people living in one of nine different regions of the world. Other players take on the roles of business and government leaders, and together all of the participants determine the future of the world through personal interactions in social, economic and environmental decision making.

While minutes tick by for the players, years pass in the Game as it travels from the present to the middle of the next century. Players, representing people in various regions of the world, are given tokens representing their real-world resources, and are informed of the problems facing their regions. The players select what their priorities will be, and work within their groups and with their neighbours to achieve the goals which they have set.

The Global Change Game's team of trained facilitators works with the participants throughout the event, helping them identify issues relevant to them, and suggesting ways to improve their proposals. The facilitators bring out the players' knowledge and experience and lead them from familiar ground to new discoveries in a creative and collaborative problem-solving process.

By the end of the Game, decades in the future, the players have explored, understood, and even solved, in their own ways, some of the most difficult challenges facing the modern world:

Hunger
Health and Nutrition
Sustainable Development
International Relations
Deforestation
Desertification
Agricultural Practices
Resource Consumption
Population Growth
War
Pollution International Trade
Economic Disparity
Biodiversity
Ozone Depletion
Climate Change
Energy Alternatives
Gender Issues
Resource Distribution
Refugees / Immigration
Geography
Education

The Global Change Game can be contacted at 204 783-2675 or www.mts.net/~gcg