“My name is Olga, and I recently took part in the international training course ‘Reinforcing Games as an Educational Tool for Social Change’, in Rustavi (Georgia), organised by Shokkin Group Estonia and other international youth organisations.
The topic of the project was inclusion as a problem among youngsters, and its main aim was to create board games that can improve youngsters’ social skills and connections in order to create a healthy social network. The objectives of the project were to point out what is inclusion and diversity, what other topics related to this one could be implemented in board games, to introduce already created board games to participants and to provide them with needed resources to create their own games based on this topic.
This project made me think a lot about nowadays problems in our society, about ways to change it and solve those problems. Now I have a lot more knowledge and motivation to actually do something.
Once everybody arrived, we started getting to know each other, did some “ice-breaking” activities, which was very useful so as to create a special bond and friendly atmosphere in the circle of attendees. After that we had some educational and interesting lectures given by the trainers. These educational sessions were very practical and I felt really productive while participating in them.
Besides that, we surely had some game development sessions, during which we created and shared our own ideas and started bringing them to life, which would be a tough task to do if it wasn’t for the help of the trainers. I was really surprised when I realised that it was not that hard to meet 20 new people in a couple of days, get to know most of them closer and even make some new friends.
It was a challenge to communicate with complete strangers on the topics that concern you in English. But luckily, that task was successfully completed. The group of participants was not only selected perfectly but they also absolutely matched that special atmosphere of friendliness and kindness during the project.
Olga Golubëk