Authors: Monika Onyszkiewicz and Jason Nardi, RIPESS Europe
This year’s anniversary edition of the Global Ecovillages Network gathering celebrated 30 years of GEN’s activity and was hosted in Hungary. The five days of meetings were filled from morning until late evening with events grouped into seven thematic blocks: ecovillages starter; ecovillages in depth; social; ecology; economy; tech, craft&art and the last section worldwide.
From previous experiences of participating in ecovillage gatherings, we know how diverse the GEN community is. This motivates us greatly to prepare activities that allow each participant to contribute their own experience and also benefit from the experiences of others. This is not easy, especially when the subject matter relates to such a complex topic as social solidarity economy.
The workshop ‘Be the change, play the change. Transform economy in a game’ was part of the ‘economy’ block, although it would have fit just as well into the “social” or ‘ecology’ blocks as well. We would also fit into the ‘tech&craft&art’ block, because, as it turned out, this part of the workshop, when scissors, felt-tip pens and markers were put to use, was very important for many of the participants.
But let’s start from the beginning.
The session was inspired and based on a game developed and prepared by the YITEG Erasmus+ project youth participants, of which RIPESS Europe was a partner. ‘The Change’ is a collaborative game aiming to sensitise players to Transformative Economies. The game was prepared by young people and, with this group in mind, serves to show various strategies for finding solutions to local problems and indicates how diverse and far-reaching decisions or omissions can be. During the game, one will be able to experience the power of community, discover various projects based on five branches of Transformative Economies, discuss their benefits and promote changes to achieve a fairer world.
In order to work with a larger group, we merged two game metholologies: the Change together with Microscope, a role playing game to strategize together and allowing to introduce other elements, for instance from transformative economies and practices with examples from Central Eastern Europe – from Hungary itself (thanks to Rita from Fekete Sereg) and Poland (Monika from Fair Trade Poland).
Being aware of this, we focused on what was most important to us: referring to the authentic conditions, problems and resources available to the communities represented by the GEN gathering participants. This was so that the workshop, although in the form of a game, was not just an abstract simulation, but a real connection to life and the current challenges that the participants had to deal with.
This gave rise to the idea that playing cards representing specific activities familiar to the participants should be made by them. Various activities appeared that had not been included in the original game. The very process of creating their own cards mentally prepared people to bring all their experience to bear on the game. The moment of creation, although very basic and limited in scope, triggered important responses in the players, as we, the facilitators, saw how deep and authentic their focus on the game was.
Quite quickly, in three 15-minute rounds, we completed the entire game and left the remaining time for discussion and sharing impressions.
If you are interested in the game and the method, you can find more information here: https://sseds4youth.org/thechange
We also encourage you to download your own language version (we have 5: Italian, English, Spanish, Greek and Czech) or we can provide you with a file that you can translate into your own language version.
