I have been talking with some pretty heavy hitters about the Ocean Litter Card Game and am so excited to see where things lead. Let's see where to start !?
WOW WOW WOW.
I was so excited when I received endorsements for the game from a British International School here in Spain and by Spanish Ambiente Europeo (an environmental agency affiliated with Ocean Conservancy), but things have ramped up and are going to another level.
September will bring more news as everyone starts to trickle back from summer vacation, so I expect things will start to move forward quickly.
I had some beta-testing of the game done during the COVID lockdown and this is what one of the families had to say about the game: PLAYA PATROL was fun to play and my 8-year old daughter especially liked it. We have a few versions of pairs-style games and the kids always beat me at them and this was no different, beaten again! But unlike the other games, PLAYA PATROL has the great addition of building awareness in the children, and myself, as we play it. It’s alarming and sometimes shocking for them to realise that all these things can be found as rubbish on beaches. Hopefully it will help to build an army of ocean defenders! - D.Huertas, Proud Dad
Sadly, since the onset of COVID, we decided to cancel all beach cleanups until further notice... but as you can see, we've been busy, busy, busy!
Enjoy the rest of your summer. Let me know if you'd like more information - we love to hear from donors, friends and potential investors.
Ann
Playa Patrol is passionate about Ocean Health. It's been an exciting time for us since the COVID19 lockdown. Even though we cannot organize beach cleanups we have LOADS OF TIME to focus on our interactive word and picture card game for kids about ocean health! And, if that wasn't keeping us busy enough, we just finished participating in the GlobalGiving CLIMATE ACTION CAMPAIGN in honour of #EarthWeek!
The family card game kid-friendly illustrations are done and a big shout out to our friends at FIVERR.com - we found the perfect graphic artist from Pakistan. As a bilingual game we've been busy working on the game translations:
I want to find a way to get this card game to as many families, classrooms, after-school, activity centres and beach clean up associations as possible to inspire everyone to get talking about ocean litter, their relationship with litter, and how our choices impact ocean health. So I've been working on a PLAYA PATROL GAME DEMO so that people can see it in action (it's only 59 seconds so check it out). The added bonus with the game is that everyone gets to practise their language skills. Parents and educators love the game because it also helps kids increase their focus and memory skills. I was inspired to create the video as part of my application to SPARK - so I hope you like it!
I continue to look for donations and investors to continue to beta test the game and produce a short run of decks. The goal is to get them to parents who currently home-school their children during this lockdown to give them fun play 'n learn tools to have a conversation about Ocean Health.
I'll be sure to share more about the game as we continue developing it.
Ann
Last night we were presented one of the Almuñécar Town Hall ENVIRONMENT AWARDS for our beach clean up work. It was an honor to accept this award from the Mayor, Trinidad Herrera, and the Councillor of the Environoment, Luis Aragon, in the Almuñécar Aquarium.
Having only become an association in 2019, it is a huge testatment to the dedication of the Playa Patrol Ocean Guardians, Team Captains, Co-Team Captains, and over 900 volunteers from over 28 countries that have joined us in local community events.
During the Founder's speech last night, Ann Jenkins shared that this year the theme is going to be AWARENESS. "Be aware of what you BUY - but first, be aware of what you can REDUCE, REUSE and RECYCLE". We are working on our 2020 event programming and will release more inforamtion shortly.
Hope that your New Years Resolution to change your relationship with single-use plastic continues to go strong. Looking forward to hearing from you.
It's been an exciting couple months here at Playa Patrol:
- Our September 22 Beach Clean Up as part of International Coastal Clean Up Day attracted 916 volunteers in four towns where we collected 101,355 cigarette butts and 865 kg of litter. The local Town Halls were actively involved and we even had a Senator join us!
- Our founder, Ann Jenkins, joined the first voyage leg of eXXpedition as they sailed from Plymouth UK to the Azores with the goal to test microplastic and microbial samples in the North Atlantic. It was a brutal experience and she's still in recovery. "We had 70knot winds for more than 8 straight days - that's 130km an hour. We ripped the mainsail twice and were close to running out of fuel. We set sail on the heels of Hurricane Lorenzo and we were beaten battered and bruised by the end of it. But the most inspired part was the rare occasion we had time to use the Manta Trawler to pull samples from the ocean. Volunteering as part of the science team was an incredible experience. I have so much to process mentally about the trip and highly encourage any women with a #passionforplastic to join in. The firt year of voyages has been crewed and they are accepting applications for year two.
With those two big projects under our belt, the time turns to planning for 2020. What's in store for Playa Patrol? Not sure yet. Education is key so stay tuned!
Links:
We learned a lot during our first crowdfunding campaign. And now that it's over, it is time to re-assess our plans. Although we fell shy of our fundraising goal we continue to work on developing the game-based learning activities for kids ... it just might take us more time to develop all six of the games we have in mind!
Even though it's summer-time we're getting ready for a huge 4-town community beach clean up and expect 700+ people on September 22 which is part of International Coastal Clean Up Day. So we're a little busy here in Spain! But we wanted to touch base with our incredible donors and thought it might be fun to share with you a teaser for one of our games that is in development!
Most people have played a game known as Concentraion aka The Memory Game. If you've never played it here's how it works. The object of the game is to gather the most cards by matching them in pairs. All the cards are dealt out, face down. Each player turns up two cards. If they match, they are removed as a pair and the player repeats the task until the select two cards that don't match. Play moves on to the next player until all the cards are gone. The winner is the person who collects the most pairs. Sounds simple, right?
Because Playa Patrol is working hard to develop amazing Young Ocean Guardians our game will focus on educating players about the harm that single-use plastic has on marine life. For example: a card with CHEWING GUM (which is made of synthetic rubber aka just a fancy word for plastic) will match a card with the same image and include a fun fact i.e. DID YOU KNOW that 100,000 tons of chewing gum is discarded annually. WOW. The standard version will include colourful images and facts in Spanish and English around proper disposal or how long it takes to disintegrate. The junior version will include only images and simple words in Spanish and English. The goal is to make learning fun and build awareness at the same time.
We are considering a more advanced version of the game where players can win more points if they collect certain types of cards, but that is still under discussion. For example, we might have some wild cards that include our mascots LOLA aka Octo-Girl and PEDRO aka Fish-Boy. Why not tell us which one is your favourite and why? PS, not sure why, but sometimes Lola looks red and she is supposed to be orange... so if you're seeing red, why not open the image to full size and check out her sassy flamenco flounce!
#helpkeepourseaplasticfree #porunmarsinplastico
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