Have you ever wondered what it was like to run a country? Could you achieve sustainable development if you were the leader of a country? Now is your chance to find out!
Join MABRRI in playing The World’s Future, an online social simulation game, where you will take a high-leadership role in one of three countries to pursue sustainable development. This social simulation involves collaboration with other players in high-leadership roles to ensure your country and world are able to achieve sustainability in a controlled, safe, and fun environment.
Players will make choices about energy and industrial investments, social development, and environmental management, among other factors, which will directly influence their country and surrounding countries in the long term. Incorporating the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the simulation will allow players to experience the interconnectedness of sustainable development in an environment that allows players to take risks and see the consequences of their decisions.
Universities and the SDGs project
The World’s Future will be hosted as part of MABRRI’s Universities and the SDGs: Engaging the campus community in the 2030 Agenda project, which aims to increase education and awareness of the SDGs at VIU and in surrounding communities. This project is striving to bridge the gap between the SDGs being seen as a national level initiative and implementation at a local level. The Universities and the SDGs project will use a variety of engagement opportunities, information distribution, and workshops to foster partnerships and collaboration to support the achievement of the SDGs.
This social simulation allows players to experience what it is like to be in a high-leadership role in which they are required to make difficult decisions that will impact the entire country and surrounding countries in the long term. By bringing The World’s Future to VIU, we hope to emphasize the difficulties in place when working to achieve sustainable development and the importance of collaboration among all countries (or in this case, organizations and community groups) to achieve the SDGs.
Session dates and registration
Session 1: July 20 & 21 - 4:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Session 2: September 25 - 10:00 am - 4:30 pm
Session 3: November 24 & 25 - 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Each session will be held virtually over Zoom. To become fully engaged in the online world, the game takes between 4 to 6 hours to play; however, the game can be split over two days, giving players some flexibility in addressing all the issues and conundrums created in the simulation.
The number of spots available for each session is limited. Each session will be available to 18 participants.
Register here
*Registering for November 24 will automatically register you for November 25 as well
For more information contact Courtney.Vaugeois@viu.ca
More information on...
In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The SDGs call for immediate action from all countries to achieve a more sustainable future for all. Acting as a blueprint, the Goals aim to lead nations to achieve social, economic, and cultural prosperity while simultaneously caring for and protecting the earth.
More information on the SDGs: https://sdgs.un.org/goals
The World’s Future lies in our hands. With sustainability only recently being pushed into the mainstream media, the question arises, how do we actually achieve sustainable development? Sustainable development satisfies the needs of the present without compromising the capacity of future generations. In the real world, decisions and investments that surround sustainable development are highly complex, requiring careful consideration to ensure positive outcomes. Therefore, a social simulation is a great approach to exploring sustainable development.
The World’s Future social simulation allows players to step into high-leadership positions and make large-scale decisions that impact the long term success of the countries they lead. Although achieving sustainability in the real world is risky, highly political, and very important work, this social simulation allows players to explore ways towards sustainability in a risk free, collaborative, and engaging environment.
More information on The World’s Future: https://worldsfuture.socialsimulations.org
The Universities and the SDGs project is funded in part by the Government of Canada’s Sustainable Development Goals Funding Program.
The World’s Future sessions are a collaboration between MABRRI, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Canada, and the Centre for Systems Solution.
A social simulation is an experiential process where a group of participants collectively explore a complex reality. By relying on the participation of real people from various backgrounds, the process is social; and by representing real-world structures and processes, it is a simulation. Engaging in a social simulation allows players to make mistakes, take risks, and learn the impacts of their decisions in a safe, judgment free environment. This approach allows for deeper learning as it provides opportunities to identify mistakes made and allows participants to think through why their decision did not work.
Watch this video to learn more about social simulations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3rJwrcgB_0