Be a changemaker for the forgotten of Central Asia

Hello! My name is Madina, and since January I've been working at Salem Social Village to oversee and develop our simulation games. Recently we changed the name of the project from Life Xperience (which was a bit hard to explain in Russian!) to Training Centre, which has helped people understand how we want to fight descrimination and make them think through teaching about global issues.

I love running our simulation games and seeing people's outlook change. For example, two guys who came with their class to go through our AIDS Xperience were just joking around the whole time. But afterwards they were really serious and quiet, and asked how they could take part in our social projects, even when their friends were laughing about them playing with kids in an orphanage. And I see lots of example like that from our different simulation games.

We don't only teach about AIDS or life in a slum. We're developing new games at the moment about themes like rich and poor, needing water, what it's like to be in a wheelchair all the time, and how to understand different cultures better. We know what we do at the Training Centre can help improve attitudes here, where young people often only think about themselves.

We've started an important partnership with Nazarbayev Intellectual School, which is funded by the government to give the best children the best education. We are running simulations and activities for their Global Issue lessons, which is a great way to prepare them to take on responsibility for the future of Kazakhstan - and it means everyone else in the city also thinks that we must be great if we're working with them!

Thank you for supporting Salem Social Village, and helping us change attitudes in this important way!

Links:

• Salem Social Village website