The Playing 4 Keeps program will engage youth in learning serious game design and digital media skills, while also exposing them to a range of important issues. In the process of becoming proficient in the use of internet and software programs, students gain vital academic and transferable life skills such as communications, writing, problem solving, collaboration, and critical thinking.
Global Kids equips young people with the skills to be engaged citizens and achieve success in a technology-driven global society. Urban youth remain largely uninformed about global issues, and today's workplace requires a wide scope of competencies, from critical thinking to digital media literacy. GK youth are ethnically and socio-economically diverse, attend low-performing, high-need schools in NYC and Washington, DC, and face significant challenges such as poverty, drugs, and teen parenthood.
This microproject will support five students' participation in a year-long digital media program that focuses on game design for social change. The program will engage underserved youth in an intensive after school game design curriculum that develops their digital and traditional literacy skills, trains them to conduct substantive online research, and utilizes project-based learning to involve students in the development of an online game about a critical international and public policy issue.
Long-term, GK participants graduate from high school, enroll in college, and become leaders in their communities and the world at large. Last year, 99% of GK seniors graduated from high school, more than 30 points higher than NYC's average. 87% of those graduates are now in college. In an alumni survey, 97% agreed that GK helped to increase their leadership skills, and 95% agreed that they increased their civic and community engagement due to GK.
