Climate Games in Action: YMCA Zimbabwe Gamifies Climate Awareness through Play and Purpose
Empowering Young Entrepreneurs: The Impact of the Agor@ Project at YMCA Togo
10/03/2025
Empowering Youth as Change-Makers: African YMCA’s Role in Africa’s Job Creation Agenda
24/03/2025
Level Up: Play, Innovate, and Change the World!
As part of the Africa Alliance of YMCAs’ Climate Games project—supported by Brot für die Welt (Bread for the World)—YMCA Zimbabwe is helping young people lead the way in climate action through creative, play-based learning.
In Gweru, Zimbabwe, the local YMCA branch recently hosted an interactive game testing session focused on climate education. This initiative is part of a broader effort to transform local YMCA branches across five countries—Zimbabwe, Kenya, Namibia, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia—into innovation hubs called Community Playspaces. These spaces give young people the tools to design games that raise awareness, influence change, and engage communities on urgent issues like climate change.
The Gweru event brought together young participants to test two newly developed climate games. The goal was not only to educate them on the impacts of climate change but also to collect feedback to improve the games for future use across Africa.
Game 1: Climate Quiz Word Challenge
The first activity was the Climate Quiz Word Challenge, a high-energy team game where players worked together to form climate-related words from scrambled letters. The game encouraged teamwork, quick thinking, and environmental awareness. Participants found the activity fun and educational, suggesting a shorter time limit—three minutes instead of five—to increase the pace and excitement. There were also calls to include more widely known words to make the game even more inclusive.
Feedback from Participants:
Participants found the quiz highly engaging and educational. While they appreciated the challenge, many recommended reducing the game time from 5 minutes to 3 minutes to heighten the intensity and excitement. There were also suggestions to include more familiar words to ensure broader accessibility and inclusivity.
Game 2: Strategic Climate Board Game
The second activity was a Climate Board Game, which introduced a strategic and reflective approach to learning. Players moved across the board facing climate-related challenges and decisions, simulating real-world efforts to adapt to and mitigate climate change. Each move represented progress or setbacks in climate action. While participants appreciated the depth of the game, they noted the need for clearer instructions and stronger connections between the game storyline and real climate situations.
Participant Feedback:
Participants appreciated the game’s concept but noted the importance of clear instructions and understanding the rules before starting. The facilitator also emphasized the need for further refinement of the game’s narrative to make it more explicitly tied to climate realities and solutions.
This initiative aligns with the YMCA Vision 2030, especially under the pillars of Sustainable Planet and Just World. It highlights how the YMCA is helping young people understand global challenges while equipping them with tools to take action and lead positive change in their communities.
By combining education with play, YMCA Zimbabwe is showing that learning about climate change doesn’t have to be dull or difficult. Through creative, youth-led approaches like these, the YMCA movement is turning awareness into action—one game at a time.
The feedback from this session will help refine the Climate Games for use across other YMCA communities. As the project grows, so does the impact—proving that when young people play with purpose, real change is possible.
See highlights from the session here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1E3oRTYnTj/
