On Thursday 2 November 2017, IGRAC's Communication Specialist Stefan Siepman will give a presentation during webinar organised by NGWA. In his 30 minutes presentation entitled 'Serious Groundwater Game: Improving Groundwater Management Through Cooperation and Collective Action', he will talk about the storyline, audiences and experiences of IGRAC's Serious Groundwater Game. The webinar will start at 11:00 AM EDT (16:00 Central European Time) and you can register here.
About IGRAC's serious game
Serious gaming can be a great tool for raising and awareness. And so is the Serious Groundwater Game, developed by IGRAC. In this computer simulation, all players are part of a small rural community of farmers who irrigate their land using groundwater. The farmers try to maximise production of crops while minimising their environmental impact.
What are the consequences for you as a farmer and as a community? What needs to be done so that everyone in the community will benefit? Players experience how groundwater can be used in a sustainable and equitable manner.
Successful use of serious game
The serious game was used as part of the GroFutures project. The main objective of this project was to review integrated physical and social science research plans in the three focal basin observatories, namely: Upper Awash (Ethiopia), Great Ruaha (Tanzania) and Iullemmeden (Niger/Nigeria/Benin/Burkina Faso).
During regional workshops in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Niger, the groundwater game was applied in ‘Play & Dialogue‘ sessions with basin stakeholders. The serious game proved to be an effective tool to improve basic understanding of groundwater resource management and sparked constructive dialogue among stakeholders.
Recently, the game was also applied during a project meeting of USAID funded Kenya-RAPID project in Nairobi and will again be used as awareness raising tool during the next in-project training.
About the presenter
Stefan Siepman is Communication Specialist at IGRAC. With increasing awareness about the importance of sustainable groundwater management being one of his main goals when being appointed, he has been involved in the development this serious game over the past three years. Other awareness raising activities included the development of the video ‘Groundwater, the Hidden Resource’.