From 31st of March to 3rd of April 2022, the DEMOGAMES project – Democracy and Games: Analog and Digital Game-Based Learning Tools for Youth Work (2019-2-DE04-KA205-018330) – has organized its Training of Trainers in Romania hosted by the Intercultural Institute of Timisoara.
Involving a group of participants, educational practitioners and youth workers, from Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Romania and the DARE Network, during this meeting we had the opportunity to play and reflect on the learning process of the DEMOGAMES games.
The training of trainers was the second opportunity to see the latest games, Utopia Island and the Competences for Democratic Culture Cards. Island Utopia continues growing while getting more specific in its rulebook and learning process, and we realised that it is a design process that will continue after 2022.
Participants learned through play and joy with the games prototypes and connected in personal and group reflection with the Competences for Democratic Culture of the Council of Europe that served as base about what youth should learn for, through and about Democracy.
This opportunity allowed the team to decide on the last tweaks needed in the games, preparing the countdown to have the first version of the DEMOGAMES BOX that will be shared within our networks.
Seeing the games in final stages is both rewarding and brings us back to the beginning of the project in 2019. New team members in the group, as well as more games to a total of 7 physical and 2 digital ones.
After the training ended, we celebrated a project management meeting where we could have a detailed review of the manual for youth workers and set deadlines for the online training design while enjoying bringing the group together after all these months of online collaboration.
(by Ramon Martinez)