Play to Learn in Reyhanli

Final Post

Jackson Elmore and Gabriel Fields
1 / 6

In refugee camps, many kids do not go to school, and end up not having anything entertaining to do. To keep them interested, and also provide physical exercise, we designed and built a play to power machine that generates electricity as the kids play on it. Not only would this reduce their boredom, but it would also empower them: allowing their play to help the people around them. 

We ran into a few problems in the beginning, mostly revolving around originality. We found out that there was already many play to power machines that existed. Some of them were ideas that we had brainstormed before. We discovered swing sets that generated electricity, see saw's, and others like that.  We decided that it would be best if we made our own playground toy, and found a way to have it generate power. 

There is a generator inside one of the boxes, that spins as the kids are balancing from left to right. There is also a ratchet that is connected to the rod, that causes the generator to spin. 

"Checkers" from Beyond Basic Needs

Mohammad Sayed

One major problem that Syrian refugges coming to Vieanna faces is learning a new language. Syrian's speak Arabic and Austrian's speak German.

We created a board game that is both educational and entetaining, it turns a checkerboard into an 8 by 8 grid of flash German-Arabic flash cards.

We created 8 catagories of helpful words. The catagories are health, food, clothes, house, job, politness, direction, and question words. Each catagory contain 8 words. There are 64 words in total. The German word will be on one side and the Arabic on the other side of the square. The board starts out with just Arabic words on it, a player picks the next move and then correctly translate the word into German, flipping the square over, only then can the player move his or her checker or chess piece. 

The game can be played by two German or Arab kids. They can have fun while they learn. 

"Monopoly" from Beyond Basic Needs

Jameson Woods and Nathaniel Freeman