Simple Solutions to Complex Problems Board Games

snakes and ladders

it’s a game everyone knows and loves

originally called moksha pratam in north

india it was created in the 2nd

century a.d and focuses on a life

journey

complicated by virtues which are the

ladders and vices which are the snakes

the game focuses on identifying your

goal accepting outcomes

keeping on moving and controlling the

risk and not the reward

indeed people pray not to land on a

snake rather than praying to land

on a ladder it was popularized in 1943

by milton bradley who’s the pioneer of

the board game industry

and he commercialized this in the uk and

the us

and snakes and ladders really predates

any formal system of

language education politics and even

common law initially it was meant to

reinforce the teachings of hinduism

in a practical way without having to

resort to physical books

and designed to teach and communicate

through experience

so the question was can snakes and

ladders actually influence behavior and

can board games

influence behavior so a study last year

by professor mitsuhiro naco

looked at this very phenomenon in a

randomized control experiment

comparing teaching through traditional

methods as well as teaching

through board games that promoted health

education

he found that over two-thirds of

participants had a higher

knowledge-based test score

three months after this intervention so

the next question was

how can we leverage that concept to

bring

key education to those who need it most

meet victor otinea a 14 year old from

nairobi in kenya his parents live on

around 400 kenyan shillings a day

it’s about three pounds and his

attendance record at school

is less than 20 due to the inability of

his parent

to pay regular school fees he studies at

gotoka primary school on the outskirts

of nairobi

to public school with about 120 pupils

focused on art english and maths as well

as teaching children

child care cooking and general exercise

so it’s focused on the core subjects in

the classroom

but sorely missing the physical social

and health education

that we fundamentally take for granted

in the western world

indeed pshe isn’t really a concept in

kenya it’s not part of the curriculum of

schools

in 2015 the kenyan government realized

this

and published a plan called the

education for all act

they identified key areas of improvement

they found

that students had inadequate knowledge

on values

and life skills there was indulgence in

risky behavior especially drug abuse

and negative peer pressure there were

those inadequate communication skills

and there was a lack of capacity

information and

role models that children could really

look up to

this all led to about 25 percent of

primary school-aged pupils

not even enrolled in school leading to

1.2 million

illiterate population drug abuse was the

key

issue the awareness rate was so low 20

of participants aged 9 to 15 understood

the dangers of drug abuse

alcohol cigarettes and cut which is

similar to speed

had positive associations in 73

of the student population and shockingly

the median age for the first

use of these drugs is just nine years

old

so this is charles masharia a trained

social worker in the uk

and a kenyan national he is a social and

academic counselor

for four schools in nairobi and in 2008

he started the mash foundation trust

focusing on sponsoring pupils throughout

the education system

in kenya he set up programs to empower

educate and support communities

especially orphans and vulnerable

children

in kenya and i’ve been working with

charles since 2013

as part of a program to bring

international volunteers out to nairobi

and teach life skills health safety

hygiene drug abuse education and morals

to children so we sat down after our

trip to kenya in 2013

and looked at how we can sustainably and

scalably teach

life skills and impart these learnings

to children

in a scalable fashion so we thought

let’s take a concept that everyone knows

so well and repurpose it for social

education

particularly on drug abuse so we adapted

well-loved

highly visible board games that children

already play in a social context

and infused a moral element to these

games

so we created ludo and snakes and

ladders with a difference and with a

purpose

it’s almost going back to the second

century concept of virtues and values

through

board games and stripping away the

commercialization

that’s happened in the following

centuries so here you can see our drug

abuse and healthy living ludo

and road safety snakes and ladders

created and printed locally in kenya

with the purpose of

leveraging board games to influence

behaviour

focusing on drug abuse to start with as

our target was to increase awareness and

promote positive

peer pressure and change that positive

association with hard drugs

we took the key findings from the

educator for rule report

focusing on the key areas of weakness

and mitigated those themes

through these board games focusing on

reinforcing good behavior

raising awareness of key issues and

teaching this in a fun

engaging way that students would

actually remember

and teaching through a collaborative

manner as opposed to just

talking so we got approval from the

ministry of education and did a limited

print

of these games that we then launched in

14 schools

around nairobi so once we got the

approval from the ministry of education

we then took these board games

out into schools we started with three

pilot schools

kachoka cassarani and gianchiro covering

over 300 students focusing on the ages

of 9 to 14.

we split children into groups of 5 to 6

and literally played board games with

them as a fun

and social activity we saw that kids

were extremely engaged as they loved the

concept

of having fun while they were learning

crucially

we followed up with schools and the

community after our pilot program

to see the impact and it was amazing

positive attitudes towards hard drugs

had dropped by 60

we found that peer pressure caused a

cyclical effect children now had role

models within themselves

and they were reinforcing their own good

behavior following the crowd

in a good way and among the adult

population we saw reverse teaching

kids were taking these board games home

and talking about their learnings

with their parents resulting in a 70

awareness increase in the adult

population on substance abuse

in these communities and therefore we

created a cyclical

a sustainable learning pattern that

covered generation to generation on the

dangers of substance abuse

through a very very simple concept we

didn’t need major socio-economic studies

we didn’t need a complex education

training regime we didn’t need to

overcomplicate the number of

stakeholders involved

we just took a very simple concept of

board games

to influence student behavior and in the

next year

we’re expanding this initiative out to

tanzania and uganda

as well as augmenting our board games

with additional topics

in particular focusing on hygiene and

hand washing

as leonardo da vinci once said many

years ago simplicity is the ultimate

form of sophistication

we took a very complex socio-economic

problem in kenya

broke it down into its fundamental

layers and created an initiative that

caused maximum

impact resources were simply not a

constraint for us

we just had to be smart in how to

utilize allocate and leverage what we

had at our disposal

to add value to the communities it’s

easy to be complicated

but simplicity is really an art and i

hope that this small initiative in board

games

has demonstrated how impactful that

ethos can be

thank you very much

you