Posts Tagged ‘education’
Minimonos & Other Games for Change
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on August 31st, 2010
Source: Worldchanging
From “Games for Change: An Interview with MiniMonos and a Look Back” by Amanda Reed:
Jeff Ramos of GameCulturalist.com recently interviewed Kaila Colbin from MiniMonos.com, which is a virtual world that encourages children and parents to practice sustainability, generosity and community. The game was developed by a group of New Zealanders who were trained by Al Gore to be Climate Ambassadors after The Inconvenient Truth came out.
Here is an excerpt from the interview in which Colbin talks about the real world projects the players of MiniMonos develop as a result of the game’s lessons:
What have you learned about gaming and social interaction because of MiniMonos?
We’ve learned that kids online will continually surprise and delight you. We’ve learned that kids are far more clued up about the environment than we had realized, and that they place far more explicit importance on it than we had realized. We’ve learned that they really appreciate being listened to, and the importance of a sense of belonging. We’ve also learned that they’ll go to astonishing lengths to get a rare virtual item!
We’ve been stunned and humbled by the many ways in which MiniMonos members have picked up the sustainability gauntlet and carried these messages into the real world. We’re seeing a generation of children who already care for the environment, who are tremendously generous, fun-loving, and supportive of each other.
We do everything we can to reinforce the need to take real-world action. We turned off the servers for Earth Hour, and every new membership provides clean drinking water for children in India…
Read the full interview and learn more about MiniMonos and the game developers. As a relative newbie to Worldchanging and games for change, this interview inspired me to look into the Worldchanging archives to see what other games and virtual worlds had been written about in the past…the extensive collection of articles I found was stunning. If you’re interested in checking some or all of them out, the list has quotes from each piece.
Check out the list compiled by Amanda Reed on WorldChanging.
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The Story of Bottled Water
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on August 20th, 2010
The Story of Bottled Water ( and manufacturing demand…)
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Eating Locally in Dakar: Shifting the Focus
Posted in Models, Movements by Kate Archdeacon on August 10th, 2010
Source: Nourishing the Planet: Worldwatch Institute
From Reigniting an Interest in Local Food by Danielle Nierenberg:
After journalism school in Senegal, Seck Madieng worked for the government. But he wanted to do “something real. I didn’t want to be a bureaucrat.” He left his job and started AgriInfos, the only Senegalese newspaper to focus entirely on agriculture, food, and healthy diets. “I’m interested in going into villages, talking to farmers, seeing how they work, how they eat. I’m trying to understand why they are poor and why they are hungry,” says Madieng.
In 2007, Madieng, along with local chef Bineta Diallo, started the Mangeons Local (Eat Locally) project in two schools in Dakar. Their goals? To teach students how foods were made and who grew and prepared them. Most urban residents in Dakar depend on foods made not in Senegal, but from Europe.
But their lessons aren’t just theoretical, they also teach students how to cook. According to Diallo, for many students it’s the first time some students have ever prepared or cooked food. Instead of baguettes and imported canned foods, the children are learning how to cook cereals and grains, including local rice varieties, fonio (a small grain typically used in couscous), millet, and sorghum. And rather than drinking milk out of boxes imported from Amsterdam, they’re learning how good local milk can taste, as well as all of the things that can be made from dairy products, including crème, cheese, and butter.
Children are the best communication vehicles to parents, according to Madieng and Diallo. They bring the skills they learn at school home, helping to improve their families’ diets. Mangeons Local also celebrates at the end of the school year with a big party highlighting local foods that parents, students, teachers, and the community can all attend. In addition to local food and juices, they play music from Senegalese musicians and singers, including Grammy winner Youssou N’Dour and Ismael Lo, and Bill Yiakhou, who all sing about agriculture.
Mangeons Local gets some support from Slow Food International, but all the staff are volunteers, which limits the number of schools who can participate in the program.
Original article by Danielle Nierenberg.
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Sharing Knowledge: Farmer-to-farmer videos
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on July 5th, 2010
Source: Nourishing the Planet: Worldwatch Institute
From “Innovation of the Week: Messages From One Rice Farmer to Another” by Alex Tung:
Some 80 percent of the world’s rice production is grown by smallholder farmers in developing countries, according to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). From Bangladesh to Benin, these farmers continue to develop different solutions to improve the process of rice production. These methods include using flotation to sort seeds, and parboiling, which removes impurities and reduces grain breakage. The Africa Rice Centre (AfricaRice) has developed a simple solution to help farmers share this knowledge: Farmer to farmer videos
Working with researchers, rice farmers and processors, they have developed a series of videos to instruct farmers, including, manual seed sorting manually and by flotation, seed drying and preservation in Bangladesh; rice quality and parboiling in Benin; land preparation for planting rice in Burkina Faso; and seedbed preparation, transplanting, weeding and soil fertility management in Mali.
Farmers in Guinea watched videos of Bangladeshi women creating solutions to improve the quality of farm-saved rice-seed. “The farmers pay a lot of attention to the quality of their seed that they store for the next season,” said Louis Béavogui, researcher at the Institut de recherche agronomique de Guinée (IRAG). “Watching the videos on seed has stimulated them to start looking for local solutions to common problems that farmers face. It is by drawing on local knowledge that sustainable solutions can often be found at almost no cost.”
To pique farmers’ interest in the project, AfricaRice researchers approach them with videos on topics relevant to that particular region. And farmers are involved in the production of the videos from the very beginning, helping researchers decide which methods should be highlighted. Edith Dah Tossounon, chairperson from a rice processing group in Southern Benin, was one of the many women who demonstrated how to parboil rice in a video.
The strong presence of women in the videos also helps local NGOs and extension offices—which tend to be made up mostly of male agents—engage women’s groups. A survey of 160 women in Central Benin comparing the use of video with conventional training workshops showed that videos reached 74 percent of women compared with 27 percent in conventional training. Women who watched the videos worked with NGOs to formulate requests for training in building improved stoves and to seek financial assistance to buy inputs such as paddy rice and improved parboilers that allow rice to stay above the water during steaming, so more nutritional value is preserved. More than 95 percent of those who watched the video adopted drying their rice on tarpaulins and removed their shoes before stirring the rice to preserve cleanliness and avoid contamination, compared to about 50 percent of those who only received traditional training. In addition, illiterate woman could easily learn from the simple language and clear visuals of the examples shown in the videos.
Read the full article by Alex Tung, and for more about innovative ways to share knowledge among rural populations, see Acting it Out For Advocacy.
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“Fair Miles”: rethinking food miles
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on January 21st, 2010
Source: Food Climate Research Network
“Fair Miles: Recharting the food miles map“ by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) & Oxfam warns that Western concern over climate change can do more harm than good if it cuts demand for food produced in developing nations. The authors say locally produced food can actually cause greater emissions of greenhouse gases, and that consumers can harm the livelihoods of poor farmers in developing nations if they stop buying their produce.
“Climate change will hit poorer rural people in developing nations first, fastest and hardest,” says James MacGregor of IIED. “High-value trade with such nations is critical to build rural economies that are resilient to climate change. The trade in fresh produce is one part of a global solution to this challenge…When consumers focus on ‘food miles’ they are ignoring the other social and environmental issues embedded in their shopping decisions…More than one million livelihoods in rural Africa are supported in part by UK consumption of imported fresh produce. We urge consumers to avoid knee-jerk reactions and think instead of ‘fair miles’ and recognise that there are also social and ethical aspects to choices about where food comes from.”
The researchers are not saying locally grown food is a poor choice. “Eating local food when it is in season is a critical element of a balanced diet, and is complementary to eating development-friendly foods out-of-season,” says MacGregor. The book argues that as farmers in developing nations contribute so little to climate change, they shouldn’t be penalised because we emit more in the West. It says consumers serious about changing their behaviour in order to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions should be cycling or walking to their supermarket.
What is Green? Retail Icon System
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on November 23rd, 2009
Source: O2: network for sustainable design
Image: Green Depot
Green Depot is a US supplier of environmentally friendly and sustainable building products, services and home solutions. Its stated goal is to establish sustainable building as cost competitive, and to provide products of the highest quality that are certified green. All of the products Green Depot sells must pass through its proprietary green “filter,” a strict quality and values criteria focusing on health, durability, performance, life cycle, natural resource conservation and energy conservation. This filter is designed to address the issues of greenwashing that serve to confuse and mislead consumers, and ensure an accurate evaluation of each product carried.
In 2008, Green Depot evolved its goal of demystifying green for consumers by developing a system of icons to break down green into five simple categories: air quality, local, social responsibility, energy & conservation. These icons allow customers to choose products that address the aspects of green living that are most important to themselves, their budgets and their families, identifying every product that meets one of the filter criteria. They are displayed as a half-tone if a product performs better than most conventional products but has room for improvement, and full-tone if it truly meets or exceeds standards.
Sustainability as a vehicle for education
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on November 4th, 2009
Source: guardian.co.uk
Photograph: Anita Maric/News Team International
From “The sausage squad” by Chris Arnot, 27 October 2009
Gloucester Old Spots are thin on the ground in Coventry, UK. But then so are alpacas, pygmy goats, Jacob’s sheep or, indeed, sheep of any kind. Yet Cardinal Wiseman school, in the north-east of the city, is home to them all. Ducks, chickens and bantams as well, plus a veritable menagerie of parrots, guinea pigs, rabbits and a rare tortoise or two. On the principle set by Noah’s Ark, there are at least two of most species here at the winner of the DCSF award for sustainable schools. Only the Gloucester Old Spot disports itself in splendid isolation, not far from the touchline of a football pitch. It has had even more room to roam since its compatriots were despatched to the slaughterhouse, en route to becoming links in the school’s award-winning brand of sausages.
“We thought we’d keep this one as she’s handsome enough to enter for shows,” says Sean O’Donovan, assistant head, leaning over to scratch the sow’s stomach as she luxuriates in a shaft of autumnal sunshine. Eventually, she’ll get around to chomping the windfall apples from the school’s abundant orchard that year 10 pupils Joseph Stevens and Craig Pears have been scattering about her paddock. O’Donovan looks on approvingly before glancing down at the pig again and confiding: “We’re going to artificially inseminate her soon. In fact, we’re just waiting for the sperm. For some reason it has to come from Ireland.”…
Supply Chain Transparency: evolving Online Tools
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on October 6th, 2009
Source: Worldchanging
Image: Sourcemap
From Kirstin Butler’s The Backstory of Stuff: New Sites Enable More Transparency in the Supply Chain
Until recently, visualizing global goods’ sourcing was the domain of contemporary artists and technoactivists. Tracing an object back to its origins could be a time-consuming and frustrating process that meant doing solitary research and creating original interfaces. But the increased accessibility of online mapping tools and wiki-style collaborations have changed the cartography of consumption.
Enter Sourcemap, an open-source application for collective supply chain research and mapping. When WorldChanging first reported on Sourcemap last year the project had yet to launch; now its users have already traced the global travels of products as diverse as cars, granola, and lace (even though the site is still in beta mode). An MIT-based team built Sourcemap’s applications around Google Earth, and its geotagged food, travel, and product maps will look familiar to anyone who has called up a set of road trip directions. Still, while not the exclusive province of programmers, Sourcemap does require some skill with computing language to manipulate data. Most visitors to the site will probably gain the most from viewing supply chains in progress.
Even the pinpoint accuracy of a global map, however, can lack the immediacy of a human story. That’s where high-profile advocacy can take up the charge of transparency for more just and sustainable sourcing practices. A great example is the Enough Project’s Come Clean 4 Congo campaign, which seeks to connect the points between your cell phone and conflict minerals.
Quite Contrary After School Farm
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on September 25th, 2009
Source: Treehugger
Kids in Carrboro, North Carolina USA, can now take advantage of Quite Contrary Urban After School Farm – an after-school program that not only teaches them about food and farming, but it aims to leave the car behind too. This is much more than a petting zoo.
Quite Contrary Urban Farm is offering much more than the usual “here are some cute goats” type of farm experience. Local school kids will be picked up by a “walking bus” and they can then participate in a wide range of activities – from recycling hunts to farm design to selling the produce from the farm at the farmers market. Etiquette lessons are also included (a welcome addition for the rest of the community!), and kids that are dropped off and picked up car-free even get a discount.
Read the full article by Sami Groves.
Living Planet City
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on September 8th, 2009
Source: Worldchanging, taken from an Article by Christa Morris
“Welcome to the Living Planet. It’s clean, it’s efficient — and it’s doable. Today.”
WWF Canada‘s The Living Planet City’s bright animation of thriving urbanism illustrates 20 big ideas to make any city more sustainable.
In the “west end,” a combined heat and power plant uses “waste” heat energy to provide chilled water for a nearby supermarket. In the “east end,” a municipal waste station feeds into a biofuel plant, complete with solar, green roofs on top. At the waterfront, wave, tidal and wind energy power the city while a rapid transit station ferries people back and forth: all this with plenty of park space.
Clicking around brings up summaries of the technology and provides links to learn more. Once properly informed and inspired, visitors are encouraged to get the ideas out there by sending a link to elected officials, friends, and business owners. You can even send a suggested message to your slated Copenhagen representative.
Good start! But is it good enough?
How do you adapt and perfect a Living Planet City when there are so many varying starting points, and thus, varying challenges? One solution would be to make the city as interactive as its sister site, “the Living Planet Community.”
In the Living Planet Community, you can commit to any number of thousands of climate-friendly actions or add your own, and the site will calculate the GHG reduction you achieve. You can even create groups — of friends, coworkers, or strangers — and set a goal for GHG reduction while engaging in planet-friendly competition.
Why not merge this community and the city? Why not take it further, with a sustainable Sim City-esque program, where, after creating your city, you get realistic feedback on its CO2 output? A well-designed simulation could train leaders (and future leaders) to see the changes necessary to achieve emissions reduction goals in their unique cities.
Read the full Article by Christa Morris, on Worldchanging.com