Introduction of a Strategic Board Game That is Aimed at Educating Children About Sustainable Development Goals of United Nations

Sirin Guney Ozenc

Abstract

As the general coordinator at Bahcesehir College (http://bahcesehir.k12.tr/), I developed a new curriculum called “Global Awareness” for high school students, with the support of UNITAR İstanbul Center. Bahcesehir Education Instution has over 150,000 students across K12 and various universities around the world. Bahcesehir started UNITAR’s Turkey office in 2019 .The center’s mission is to advance and enhance capacity on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for public and private sector leaders, nongovernmental organization representatives, academics, local authorities, and students. In these troubled times, we all need to understand The Earth and need to take care of it. For that purpose, and under the leadership of Bahcesehir Institution, I developed a strategic board game called ECOTOPIA. ECOTOPIA is a board game based on ideas of sustainability and continuous development. Participants in the game need to develop various strategies regarding ecological conditions, sustainable energy sources; as well as attitudes towards air, water and soil pollution. The goal of every player is to create a healthy and sustainable state. Drawing on the insight that the environment is a common resource to all, the game is constructed in such a way that collaborative strategies, rather than destructive ones, prove successful for each participant. Ecopoly functions as a fun model through which players can understand what type of approaches will be useful in the real world and the dire need for cooperative strategies to overcome the calamities of the 21st Century.


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