Teaching Sustainability Through Play

Many teachers, therapists, and increasingly, sustainability professionals, will tell you that you can show people stats, figures, compelling pictures, and even videos, but perhaps the way many people learn best is through play.

GBO Hawai’i, a new sustainability board game, teaches sustainability in a very entertaining way. In the game, you fend off the oil industry’s lobbyists, and navigate public policy that sometimes supports sustainable economic development and sometimes works against it. There’s even bureaucracy in the game. To build a wind farm, for instance, you need to apply for a permit, then wait a turn, and depending on your roll next turn, it may or may not get approved. Then when the oil-industry backed candidate wins the governor’s campaign, everyone gets hosed. Sometimes those permit applications get revoked.

For educators, there are even lesson planning materials, free for download, on GBO Hawai’i‘s website. With three levels of the game (beginner, intermediate, and advanced), teachers can have weeks worth of lessons with their students, engaging them to try new strategies and slowly becoming more and more fluent in the language of sustainability.

Check out this video about the game.

GBO Hawai’i’s Facebook fan page has a discussion forum on their wall, so you can see what others are saying about the game. My favorite part? The directions on how to play are in video form. No need to even read the paper instructions in the game itself! You can just use them for reference.