A Game of Choice, Not Chance to meaningfully engage young people.
The Go Nisha Go game aims to empower adolescent girl game players to become active decision-makers in their own lives especially when it comes to becoming better equipped to make decisions and achieving positive health, safety, career, and educational outcomes.
It is a digital role-play-based game for girls in India and is the first game from the Game Of Choice, Not Chance, a platform for digital games. Funded by USAID and powered by Howard Delafield International, the game integrates direct-to-consumer resources, products and services for adolescent girls.
In alignment with Restless Development’s vision towards realising, enabling and connecting youth leadership initiatives, Restless Development has been onboarded as a partner to implement the meaningful youth engagement component of the game Go Nisha Go – A Game of Choice, Not Chance.
Restless Development supports youth-led change where it’s needed most and happens at scale – working with the biggest youth generation in history.
As global experts in youth-led change with a presence of over 30 years, we have developed a unique approach towards meaningful youth engagement. In addition to our own programs which support young people to lead development, Restless Development also works to improve meaningful youth engagement across the development sector and beyond.
We are using a phased approach for the implementation of the game. The approach is designed to keep the central focus on meaningful engagement of young people by supporting them to be leaders, collaborators and beneficiaries of the project during its different phases.
We aim to engage 15 young leaders using the following components:
FIND: Identify and engage young people, in all their diversity, as participants and in the launch of the game.
EQUIP: Provide training to build youth with knowledge, skills, and capabilities
ENABLE: Foster supportive environments that allow young people to exercise their agency and become genuine contributors to the project
CONNECT: Create both pipelines and pathways for young participants to enter the Game of Choice design cycle, as well as engage in repeated cycles in order to age “up” rather than age “out” of the field;
TRACK: Develop and implement monitoring and evaluation strategies that document the results of youth participation at different levels.
The implementation plan in itself accounts for both online and offline activities with a campaign plan at its core.
We are engaging 15 Youth Leaders directly in the 3 states of Bihar, Delhi and Rajasthan, who in turn have brought on board 20 Youth Peers/Changemakers.
The Youth Leaders are in the process of helping the Changemakers play the game and understand its benefits. Simultaneously, the Youth Leaders will also make the Changemakers aware of the different themes of the game, such as Sexual and Reproductive Health.
Along with the Changemakers, the youth leaders are also engaging with State Coalition Partners for the implementation of the programme on-ground. With the partners, the youth leaders organise and lead network events in the community to further spread awareness about the game and related themes.
