Goals

Problem statement:

Modern youth love computers. Nowadays most of the time they play online or offline video games. You cannot even find many youngsters in the yards playing football or some other popular outdoor games. As video games are usually being played alone, youth don`t socialize often.

Playing face to face games and socializing is important. Multiplayer games develop various skills in kids and youth like communication, collaboration, creativity, logical thinking, decision making, time management, entrepreneurship, etc. These are the skills that are key competencies for every person, no matter which profession we will choose. Formal education is not enough for developing such skills and additionally non-formal educational activities are needed for developing these abilities.

Moreover, often youth spend their free time in things that have no value, like spending hours on social pages. It is important how youth use their free time in a way that they have fun and get valuable experience at the same time.

Proposed Solution:

I want to create a board game club where youth and adults can gather to play with friends or strangers to develop different skills. Board games are a real face-to-face and fun way of learning and mastering various skills that are important for social and professional life.

One such board game space will be created in the office of local organization CISV Georgia and EMT, where I will organize special board game days. Youth workers and volunteers of CISV and EMT will be also involved in organizing and making these meetings interesting. After playing games we can discuss the skills that the game taught us. To increase the interest and add more joy, competitions will be held and winners will be announced.

I want to make “board game space” mobile and take it to as many places as possible. I will negotiate with universities, schools, social cafes and bars to let us organize board game days and events in their locations as well. Additionally, with the help of local schools and NGOs, I will organize educational activities with board games in regions, initially in Kvemo Kartli. Moreover, board games are significantly important for people whose disabilities stops them from playing sports. I will try to engage them as well.

The meetings will be held once a week at one of the spaces. Around 10-15 people will be attending each board game meeting. The access to the board game club meetings will be free initially, later small fee will be taken, in order to make the club sustainable and afford to add new games to the collection.

Sustainability:

Board game meetings will be continued in EMT and CISV office. I will continue to organize board game days in other spots, schools, universities, bars. As mentioned above, initially, it will be free to attend on meetings and play games, but later some small amount of fee will be charged in order to make the club sustainable and afford to add new games to the collection.

Equal gender opportunity:

We will ensure that on the board games meetings there will be equal gender representation. The board games meetings will be open for all interested people. We will make sure that on our meetings will be both male and female represented equally. We will do this by meetings in schools, universities and social cafes and informing as many people as possible.