"RESILIENCE: SURVIVE AND THRIVE": AN EDUCATIONAL TABLETOP GAME ABOUT BALANCING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND CLIMATE RESILIENCE
Laura David, Talna Lorena dela Cruz, Bayosa Aya Carino, Sheila Ruth Magdaraog, R. Gonzales, Elena E. Pernia, Nicanor Marco Valdez, Marx Ian Rulloda, Karlo Gabriel Senga · 51st BIOTA Annual National Convention and Scientific Sessions · 2016
The Philippines is highly vulnerable to climate change, and it is important for Filipinos to understand concepts of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA). Mainstreaming DRR-CCA into secondary and tertiary school curricula aims to raise awareness and provide a better understanding of disaster management for students, teachers and communities. Interactive games play an increasing role in education as teachers seek to deliver core lessons in a format that holds their students’ interests. The tabletop game Resilience: Survive and Thrive was designed with the intent of teaching students and teachers lessons on balanced development and natural resiliency under the climate change lens. The game was developed under the Biodiversity and Resilience Project (BaR) as a CHEd-funded collaboration between the University of the Philippines and Balangay Entertainment, a game design company. The goal is to effectively engage the youth to introduce climate change concepts and extreme weather events and their possible effects to society. The game mainly strives to establish necessary decision-making skills specifically in developmental planning to achieve safer, adaptive and disaster-resilient Filipino communities through balanced sustainable development. It is designed to let the players account for the level of development their communities attain from their shared resources under the threat of potential disasters that they will have to face. The BaR Team has been collaborating with the Philippine Science High School and other academic institutions in incorporating the game into their curriculum. The BaR Team has also deployed the game to several LGUs (Cavite, Davao, etc.) and the feedback is that the game is making them realize the need to re-check priorities of development. These prove that games such as Resilience: Survive and Thrive can effectively reach out to children and adults alike.