In Nigeria’s patriarchal setting, where men have a high social standing and abusing women and children is normalized, allowing everyone to share their perspectives and project their feelings is extremely important to creating an all-inclusive Nigerian culture. “Navigating Your Truth” is a game designed for the younger generation, ages 9-17, that empowers them to speak up and learn that their voice matters.

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Designed for workshops led by Wazieh Offuh as part of the Advocacy On Domestic Violence Against Women & Children Organization, “Navigating Your Truth is a turn-based, active listening game that emphasizes letting everyone share their perspective while the rest of the group listens, judgment-free. The activity uses open-ended prompts to delve deep into the problems these teens face, paired with strands of yarn that allow visual representation of the storyteller's narrative. This allows expression and teaches ways to actively listen and connect with another person’s emotional and physical traumas, leading to overall understanding and peace.

Thesis Statement

Wazieh Foundation is ran by Wazieh Offuh and was created in order to create a safe place and raise awareness about Domestic Violence against women and children.

Background

Wazieh is a school teacher and community activist who is seen as a safe person to talk to within her community.

Process

Prototyping

Questions

Interview/Feedback

Re-iteration

This is a diagram of our main process flow. We went through several stages of this cycle where we would develop questions, interview Wazieh, re-iterate the design based on the interview, then prototype.

Interview I

What is your personal story?

Wazieh Offuh

Organization

Cultural Barriers

Healing Process

Interview II

How do you run your workshops?

Workshop

Active Listening

Interactive Segments

Informative Plays

Active Listening

Active Listening is important to someone feeling comfortable sharing with you. Knowing how to listen and take notes while also observing someones emotion and feelings,, and also being able to give feedback that is constructive and also respectful.

Precedent

Where Should We Begin?

• A game of stories
• Encourages active listening
• Allows space for people to open up

"I believe that human connection has transformative power in all aspects of our lives." 

Esther Perel

Precedent

Bullet Journaling

• Quick organization tool
• It helps you visualize your ideas
• Fosters self-expression

“In the most connected time in history, we're quickly losing touch with ourselves.”

Ryder Carroll

Interview III

How can we help you best?

Original Idea

Work with Teens

Infographics

Healing Process

Mock-up Design

We started making a card game with various prompts to get teens more comfortable with each other.

• Playful comfortable design
• Finding mental triggers
• Four stages
• Focused on active discussion

Key Characteristics:

Interview IV

How does this look?

15 minute sessions

I cant wait to try it

Looks great 

Card Designs

Information

Finding Mental Triggers

Visualizing Experiences

Healing Process

Game Flow

Final Photos

Learning Points

We learned from Wazeih that child abuse is a very pressing issue in Nigeria, lots of children are taken and put to work as maids and work for 12+ hours at the age of 12-17 and getting little sleep and in turn failing in school.

Emotional Abuse is a big issue because not many people notice that others are being emotionally abused and it causes personally identity crisis

Greshma Pious Raju, the founder of the Ecopeace Teen Cafe, has a Master of Arts Degree in International Peace Studies from the United Nations Mandated University for Peace. Greshma has worked at projects like the Earth Charter that focuses on fosterijng global interdependence and shared responsibility. Currently, she is leading the global campaign "One Billion Youth for Peace," which was initiated by the United Religions Initiative in India. Greshma believes that small acts of love and compassions will make the world better.

Peaceleader

Greshma is exploring new paths to strengthening interconnectedness among youth through online platforms. To complement her goal, she started Ecopeace Teen Cafe in 2021. 

We are working with Greshma and the Ecopeace Teen Cafe to support her in creating lesson plans that are engaging for the teens that she works with. Greshma struggled with connecting with teens through online dialogue using the platform of zoom. She shared with us that she feel the students did not connect to one another and were not engaged her classes and often did not attend all four sessions. 

We worked on creating an updated lesson plan with her that would help her to engage more with the teens. For example, in this lesson plan, we created a fun interactive game of zoom bingo that kept them engaged.

Past session topics

Music and Peacebuilding

Interfaith dialogue

Climate Change

Different Programs Around the World

Green Leaders Academy 

Spanish Program in Latin America & Caribbean

French Training Program in Africa

Ecopeace Youth talks on Wednesdays 

Issues Identified

Connecting on zoom

Language barrier

Engagement

Application process

Precedents

Interview 1

With the first interview we wanted to learn more about how the Ecopeace Teen Cafe work and what happens in the meetings. 

• Each session lasts for 1 month and meets weekly on Saturdays
• The project's goal is to create peace through a connection with nature
• Each meeting has a speaker who talks for most of the meeting
• Teens are disengaged through the zoom platform
• Teens are hesitant to talk
• Language barriers create struggles in communication for some teens because meetings are in English
• Greshma starts the meetings with an icebreaker like what's your favorite food?
• There are different sessions that take place all around the world 
• Greshma wants to have sessions in person but it is too expensive to get food and transportation for teens

Interview 2

We wanted to figure out what kind of specific help she wants with the meetings

• Students most positively reacted to interactive sessions
• Greshma wants us to make the sessions more interactive
• Students are hesitant to unmute
• Students sign themselves up
• Students have to fill out a form to sign up and Greshma chooses teens off of their answers
• Greshma wants us to create more fun icebreakers
• Her most successful icebreaker has the teens go plant a tree and check on it every week

Interview 3

We showed Greshma our icebreakers

• Create a film that shows off your environment
• Research Sustainable Development Goals and debate
• Use grey water to water the trees that they have planted
• Go outside and look for an object that makes you feel an emotion
• Make an activity generator that the teens can use
• Use websites like Kahoot
• Use things like zoom whiteboard

Interview 4

We show Greshma our new lesson plan

• Greshma told us the current meeting structure has some icebreaker and then the speaker and then a final reflection
• Greshma is open to a new meeting structure which we can make
• Greshma likes the idea of having something go throughout the whole meeting
• Zoom Bingo

Greshma asked us to help her to engage teens throughout her zoom sessions. She also expressed concern that teens were going to the first meeting, and not return, and she asked us to help her to brainstorm how to make the sessions more interesting so students felt motivated to return. One of our ideas was to create a number of ice breakers that helped the student to get to know one another and to be more comfortable both with the facilitator and each other. Later, we realized that this would not sustain engagement throughout the whole meeting. So, we switched focus to creating a curriculum that would provide a format for the facilitators to keep the students interested throughout the meetings.  

Current structure

What we learned from this experience

Will

Christopher

I learned about how to work with a client and how to pursue a project that doesn't spark your interest.

I learned how to effectively and efficiently work with a client by engaging the client in dialogue that includes both open ended and precise questions that assisted me in understanding the scope and the goal of our work together. I also learned in this project how to compile seemingly unconnected ideas into a synthesized final project that has practical application. 

"The Love Within" is a collection with two card decks made to help survivors of domestic violence build self-love and self-appreciation. These cards will be used by Zelda Van Hinsta, who runs a recovery program in South Africa for these survivors.

Historically women in South Africa have had limited rights and have been dominated by a patriarchal society. Even now that more freedoms have been given to women, the situation in South Africa still protects men more than women. Worldwide, 27% of women and girls aged 15 and older have experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence. In South Africa, this figure is a shocking one-third or even up to 50%.

With interpersonal trauma, like sexual assault or something else that violates boundaries, the implicit message is that you’re not worthy of respect.

"They don’t think about themselves they just give and give"

"These women always put themselves last"

“You should also take care of yourself if you want to help others”

"The light inside you will also light up the light of people that surround you, but first love yourself!"

"They will take care of their family, community, etc but they lose themselves"

Why it's Important

- Our Peace Leader Zelda

Process Diagram

Introduction

Understanding Needs

• Self-love
• Self-appreciation
• Self-worth
• Self-confidence
• Opening up

Struggles

Idea Approval

Feedback

Self-Confidence

Self-Appreciation

Facilitating conversation

Categories

Thesis



The Village was designed for Issah Toah, who needed a facilitation tool to help break the ice between participants during his seminar, African Students For Interfaith Tolerance. The Village allows players to connect with each other by encouraging collaboration, while also forcing players to occasionally act in self-interest. This dynamic creates a bond between players, opening them up for dialogue later in the seminar.

Project Goals

Main Goal: Create a game that can help introduce people to each other and encourage them to work together.

Sub Goals: Make a game that isn't strictly collaborative but heavily encourages it.

Background 

• African Students for Interfaith Tolerance (ASIF) is an organization who's mission is to build sustainable peace, interfaith harmony and development by empowering Africa’s youth and engaging religious actors for sustainable development.

Timeline

Key Takeaways

1st Intervew (getting to know Issah)

2nd Interview (begin brainstorming)

3rd Interview (final brainstorming)

4th Interview (prototyping)

• Issah mainly works with African Students For Interfaith Tolerance (ASIT)
• Participants are mostly youth.

• Breaks are important in between heavy emotional conversations

• Create an 'icebreaker' game?

• Definitely create a game.

• Focus on community and colaboration

• Focus on community and colaboration

Precedents (Tileform)

Tileform is a collaborative resource management game about overcoming differences while building a sustainable community. Each player has different goals they must complete to win. This simulates the potential collaboration, competition, and conflict that arises when stakeholders have varying motivations. Playing this game should create conversations about the complex relationships and power dynamics between communities, companies, and governments as they work together to address climate change.

Precedents

Key Precedent

Our game uses 7 wonder's

• Turn Order
• Card Style
• "Ages" mechanic

Brainstorming

Key Points for Our Game

• Players are on separate teams but still encouraged to work together.



• While teams are encouraged to collaborate with each other, individuals can win.

• A limited amount of resources are fluid and can be moved around and shared with other groups.

Game Play

• Each player gets a hand of 7-9 cards.
• Everyone plays a card, paying its resource cost if applicable, and then passes the remaining cards in their hand to the left.
• After the cards are passed, a spinner is spun to see if any disasters happen, if non do, play continues.
• Different resources are required for building and sustaining housing, and if a players population reaches 0 then they are removed from the game.

Resources required