Village the Game: Play it. Love it. Live it.

Living in the dumps doesn’t have to be all that bad: How one partnership is making a difference in people’s lives in Peru

By Sheila M. Romero, MSc

When a human being resorts to living in a dump, it is sheer evidence of poverty hitting rock bottom. In 1999, the United Nations Children’s Fund found an estimated 45,000 children living in dumps around extremely impoverished areas of Brazil. Somalia and Peru’s refuse sites share a common history of families running from civil strife and camping out at dumps; later forging lives for themselves by scavenging for food and items to wear and sell from among the rubbish. Unfortunately, there are no statistics available to pinpoint the number of people currently living in similar situations throughout the world. The fact remains that people living in dumps and landfills expose themselves to hazardous toxins and have no way out of poverty while remaining in their present situations. However, with no one to educate them about these hazards or teach them how to make the most of their available resources, these people most likely will continue to live a vicious cycle of poverty and in the dumps.

There is one organization, however, that has developed an innovative strategy to educate refuse dwellers in urban areas around Peru. Ciudad Saludable (translated as “Healthy City” in English), is a non-profit organization comprised of chemical, industrial, and agricultural engineers who teach people currently living in the dumps how to make a profitable living out of waste management. In addition to helping more than 150 informal trash workers organize into 13 micro enterprises across the country, Ciudad Saludable (CS) has successfully educated and worked with organizations and agencies at the local, regional and national levels to create and implement protective laws for those living and working with trash at the informal sector. CS has been featured as one of the "New Heroes" on PBS, a program aired on television in 2005. (See http://www.pbs.org/opb/thenewheroes/meet/ruiz.html for a brief synopsis on CS's founder, Albina Ruiz.)

Village the Game has recently partnered up with Cuidad Saludable, and is featuring the organization as one of the infrastructure options for gamers building virtual villages within the game.

For more information, visit http://www.ciudadsaludable.org/es/english.htm

Cosmos Ignite a social venture based in New Delhi, India is working with Village the Game to spread awareness of their popular solar-powered light the MightyLight. Cosmos Ignite manufactures and sells a super-efficienct solar-powered white-light LED technology that is super-durable. Many victims of the tsunami and other natural disasters have benefited from their easy-to-use technology. Also many families are replacing their polluting kerosene lamps with their clean and safe Mightylight, which creates no air pollution or fire hazard. Cosmos Ignite is achieving economies of scale by deliberately going global with their products. Village the Game will be helping expand that global reach. Read more about them in this BusinessWeek article.

Angel Inokon, Associate Producer at Playfirst, is now officially advising Village. Her involvement comes at a crucial time when Village is preparing for the rapidly growing casual games audience. Angel brings great insight into the production of popular games combined with a strategic perspective on how Village the Game can make its mark in the serious games movement. Angel served as Lead Producer on the wildly popular game "Wedding Dash". You can read more about her and the movement she is helping lead in this article from the San Francisco Business Times.

Angel holds an MA in Learning Design and Technology from Stanford University and BA from Harvard University.