Exploring empathy with an interactive experience

For Compassion Australia, we created an app-led game to help young people empathise with those in poverty – and consider how they might help to change the world to end it.
 
Weaving together online and offline elements for greater immersion, in ‘The Village’, a group of teenagers are informed that they are part of a single village, and that they need to produce enough food, clothes, and medicine to survive.
 
The game app keeps track of each participant’s resources and education level on a leaderboard for everyone to see – and allows them to transfer their in-game money to pay each other, or to buy and sell resources. The competitive atmosphere drives each person to try to out-do each other. But no matter how hard they work, some struggle to keep up due to lack of education or starting resources.
 
When the game is over, participants are guided to examine the systemic mechanisms that prevent people from getting ahead. And if they’re inspired to create real-world change, they can get personally involved with Compassion’s work to end poverty around the world for good.