A new video game for children’s rights !

To celebrate its 25th anniversary and the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the IBCR is preparing an innovative project: the creation of a video game to raise awareness among girls and boys in Canada and in the world, about their universal and fundamental rights.

While it is recognised that youth is handling new technologies early and enjoyably, there is no online tool for them. In addition, the Convention and its articles are not very well-known by children and public in general. The IBCR wanted to create a video game for children and to create it with them.

Consequently, two elementary classes from schools Sainte-Cécile and Saint-Fabien (Montreal) were chosen to participate in the creation of this video game, as well as students from the École Polytechnique in Montreal, and the École nationale des arts et métiers (France).

As a first step, two days of meetings have been organised to enable children to discover the Convention on the Rights of the Child through various activities and to allow them to choose rights to promote in the video game (right to education, right to health care, right to participate…). Then, students from Polytechnique Montreal presented different video game concepts to children.

In small groups, children were thus led to think together about the different characteristics of the video game and the concept that they would like. They were really enthusiastic about it. This dynamic exchange allowed the four Polytechnic Montreal students to take into account all their observations and remarks, in order to create a relevant and adapted prototype.

The children had a good imagination, we expected them to put a lot of fun into it, but they were focused and very serious about the video game’s realisation aspects. They really put some effort into their ideas, I could not have found all that when I was young !
Student of Polytechnique Montreal, during a meeting with children

 

The next step is the development of the 3D video game, which will then be tested by these children, in order to proceed to the finalisation of the video game and its launch nationally and worldwide.