Digital Game to Help End Violence Against Women
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Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 9/28/2009
The Emergent Media Center (EMC) is using the world’s favorite sport to help impact attitudes surrounding the treatment of women.Empowering Play, a virtual soccer game created by EMC, is geared toward young boys, who earn points based on how they treat each other and the women in their lives.
“It’s built on FIFA fair-play rules,” says Ann DeMarle, director of EMC, which is based at Champlain College in South Burlington, VT. You show respect on the field, and respect to the females in one's life—not just your teammates.”
One in every three girls will be beaten, coerced, or abused in some way during her life, according to statistics from the United Nations Development Fund for Women. It’s these numbers that EMC hopes to shift, along with global leaders and others who have taken up the cause.
Take journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s latest book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Knopf, 2009), which examines the treatment of women in developing nations. “He’s looking at the global problem like we are,” says DeMarle, who blogged about the best-selling book in a recent post.
With an initial grant from the United Nations Population Fund, EMC first went to South Africa to work with students and see how they used technology at home to find the best way to engage them. Back at home, EMC has now started production on its video game, and hopes to have the first of several episodes online and ready to play in time for the launch of this year’s FIFA World Cup in June 2010.
While the game will first appear on the Web, plans are in the works for a mobile version, as DeMarle notes that developing nations have greater access to cell phones than computers. And getting to as many young boys before they have a chance to harden their attitudes towards girls is critical to EMC’s mission.
“We are looking at young boys to make an impact, and have them start thinking differently,” she says. “We want to show them different consequences with different results and how that ties to their behavior.”
