The Giving Game

Educational community-service programs for youth designed to engage them in solving the social challenges and problems of their own or other communities while developing core life, personal, social and thinking skills.

The solution is to create programs for youth, engaging them in community-service work and helping them develop essential life skills in the process. For example, you may invite youth in refugee camps to think and create innovative solutions for health and hygiene challenges, either of their own camp or of another, while partnering and being mentored by local NGOs and organizations. In doing so, not only are you teaching them the skills they need to think through some of these challenges, you are also empowering them to care for others, to give back, even in their difficult circumstances, to think creatively and to be active contributors to their own future trajectories. 

By engaging youth in community-service work and engaging them to solve their own social challenges or those of others', you will be equipping them with skills like empathy, critical thinking and creativity, as well as a sense of purpose, a can-do attitude, self-confidence and kindness, respect and compassion. 

The problem is that youth, both privileged and underprivileged, are less and less focused on the needs of others and more focused on themselves. In doing so, they are losing their sense of empathy, purpose and motivation. They are also not equipped with essential skills and characteristics, like compassion, tolerance, respect, and a much-needed sense of empowerment - the realization that *they* can make a difference and create change in the world.

We've tested it. We've created transformative educational service-learning programs for children in the UAE. E.g. we had school students create solutions to address the needs of refugee children by making gifts, toys or educational videos for them. Through this, we managed to build their empathy, global awareness and sense of social responsibility and purpose. 

By focusing on the needs of others, you empower them to use them to the benefit of their communities and societies and you allow them to develop skills that are essential for their own life and employability.

1) Development of essential skills, such as empathy, kindness, creativity, critical thinking, etc. 

2) Serving the needs of the community and creating solutions for social challenges that benefit those with unmet needs

3) Benefit will be to participating youth who are able to complete the challenges through a combination of a gamified online experience with levels and stages of "social challenges" that they have to solve as well as on the ground training and mentorship through partnering NGOs

Present them with tiered social challenges that are more difficult with time and monitor the progression of their ability to solve them - Youth develop key skills like empathy, creativity and critical thinking

Identify list of core social challenges, create goals with the youth themselves, set a timeline and then track solution success rate - Key social challenges are addressed in specific communities or spaces like refugee camps

Measure the number of youth that are trained by partnering NGOs and organizations that are then able to intern or work with those NGO's as a result of their training - Educate and empower youth

The use of technology will mainly be to guide the youth through the social challenges that they need to solve, giving them the prompts or tools that they need to begin thinking about the questions or issues, and providing basic information and checkpoints along the way, in a gamified format. 

The emphasis will be on people helping and connecting to the needs of other people. The technology will be used to support and prompt and motivate, however, the ultimate purpose will be for people to connect and engage with the real world and real people, and for adults and employees of partner organizations to mentor, teach and inspire the youth to help them build their skills. 

Through technology, as well as offline training programs that are offered in different locations that support and supplement the online self-prompted programs and courses that the youth can complete. 

The offline trainings would have the highest cost, and those can be offered in collaboration with local NGOs working to solve the same social challenges, thereby giving them additional resources to come up with creative solutions (with the youth). 

Offering similar programs to more privileged youth through schools and youth centres and using the payments and fees from those to support the programs that are offered to underserved youth in other areas. 

Note: we have already been running these programs in the UAE and making revenue from them and supporting our team's research and growth. 

Scalability will depend on partnerships with key NGO's, organizations and companies on the ground.

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I'd love for these programs we're suggesting to reach every child, everywhere, because we believe strongly in the power of community-service in teaching youth to care for others and themselves. Our hope is that by being part of SOLVE, we may reach as many youth as possible and work together to use technology to re-activate our collective humanity and empower our youth to be change-makers of today.

Sheraa Entrepreneurship Centre - Sharjah, UAE