Urban Gardener 2050

Urban Gardener 2050 is an interactive online videogame created to raise awareness on sustainable and organic farming, as well as nutrition choices among children and youth. The videogame’s main goal is to massively improve feeding behaviors through edutainment and social media. Children will play Urban Gardener 2050 in order to learn about the importance of organic agriculture and a balanced diet by building urban gardens, harvesting fruits and vegetables. The videogame will also allow us to interact directly with them, by sending tips and recommendations on food, and to collect data about their choices and the ones made by their families. The videogame will enhance the results and outreach of our ongoing hands-on trainings on urban agriculture, and it will be used for reaching both high-income populations and low-income areas in which we work. Looking forward, Urban Gardener 2050 could potentially become part of the regular curriculum taught in public and private schools in Colombia
Briefly describe the social impact that your solution generates
Based on PSF’s work with children and communities in low-income and high-income schools in Bogota—both through nutritional programs for kids and the international success of videogames—we believe our impact and outreach can increase by introducing ICTs and videogame experiences as part of our “Seeds of Confidence” project. The game “Urban Gardener 2050” will enhance and expand the content provided in “SoC’s” urban agriculture training (reaching over 300 children in 2014, with the potential to reach more than a thousand children by the end of 2017), while reaching new audiences not currently enrolled in our trainings. Edutainment through videogames provides a cheaper and more interactive way of reaching out to children all over Bogota and in other cities in Colombia.
Describe briefly your project’s financial sustainability model
We plan to charge a fee for participants (child) using our videogame, whether provided by the schools with whom we teach urban agriculture, or by additional schools interested in introducing alternative teaching methodologies and courses. The videogame could be made available to the network of public schools, and paid for by local governments, as part of their strategy for reducing obesity and for increasing nutrition among low-income populations. Finally, databases and information created and gathered through the videogame could be shared with governments, institutions and commercial companies to better inform and improve services and products to these populations.
How is your product or service different from what exists on the market?
The purpose of this videogame is to influence the way Colombia’s youth interacts with food. The videogame aims to increase the number of participants in PSF’s urban agriculture programs by making schedules more flexible and adaptable for them in order to avoid dropouts, by reducing operating costs in the long term, and by improving proximity to youth while generating key data on consumption patterns. PSF believes this can be achieved by using technology and innovative approaches complementary to the more traditional ones we already use in “Seeds of Confidence”. Our videogame is interactive and collaborative in many ways: Thanks to of its contents and its pedagogic way of teaching, we will be able to interact directly with children and their families, and with them identify nutritional and environmental challenges and needs, as well as potential solutions.
In what stage is your solution?
Prototipo
Is your enterprise constituted as a company in any country? If so where?
We are an NGO in Colombia
What category you are applying for?
Salud colaborativa
What is the scalability of your project? Zonal, national, regional or global? Why?
Global: Colombia will be a perfect pilot country thanks to its large number of Faceboook users (89.5% of total internet users) and the increase of ICTs and connectivity around the country. Looking forward, Urban Gardener 2050 could potentially become part of the regular curriculum taught in public and private schools in Colombia. Based on the results of this first pilot, Urban Gardener 2050 could be easily translated into other languages, countries and populations.
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10 years ago

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