Project Description
Professor Lien Tran received a grant from Invoking the Pause to introduce the use of games with local and regional climate and disaster risk management organizations in Barbados. In June 2014, Professor Tran organized and co-facilitated a 2-day workshop called “Let’s Adapt: Games for Climate Change Resiliency” along with team members Reynette Royer from the IFRC’s Red Cross Caribbean Disaster Risk Management Reference Center (CADRIM), Mini Saraswati from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre (RCCC), and Professor Clay Ewing (also from UM’s School of Communication). As a result of this unique funding opportunity, these organizations were able to partner together for the first time and to introduce an innovative approach to reaching climate risk stakeholders in the Caribbean.
Workshop participants represented the Barbados Red Cross, Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Caribbean Institute for Meteorology & Hydrology (CIMH), Community Disaster Response Teams (CDRT), and the University of the West Indies’ Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES). By connecting relevant parties from Barbados and around the region on new participatory approaches to adaptation, this workshop explored how interactive resources and game-based activities can assist in the task of communicating climate change information and invoking grassroots participation within Caribbean communities. As a direct result of this workshop, Professor Tran is now discussing future plans to formally adapt and disseminate some of the games presented at the workshop – like Humans vs. Mosquitoes – as well as new climate-related topics with communities in the Caribbean.
