Breaking the poverty cycle?
There's a very interesting game from UNICEF called "Ayiti: The Cost of Life" that I discovered today. For those of you who don't speak Creole, Ayiti is the word for Haiti. It's an interesting way to sort of get a feel for the poverty cycle, and I can't say I ever expected to turn up an online game based on Haiti!
Your task is to get a family of 5 through four years, split into four seasons (although technically Haiti really only experiences two seasons, so they are kind of stretching that a bit). At the beginning of each season, you can buy supplies at the store if you have money, then decide what each family member will do for that season: go to school, work/volunteer, stay home and rest, work on the family farm, or go to the hospital. There are four different goals that you'll need to balance: education, money, happiness, and health.
A strategy that worked for me was to pretty much avoid the school and instead buy books at the start of each season, then send everyone off to work or volunteer. Over time, if you volunteer then the local NGO will build things like community centers and libraries, where they hold events that will help boost your family's education anyway. Also, you can pretty much ignore the family farm unless there's no job available for the youngest kid. You should also keep the lifestyle on "good life" as much as possible (if you get too low on money they will bump you down automatically to "poor life", but that makes health a big issue). Definitely buy the market stall when they give you the chance, and investing in things like shoes, a bicycle, and livestock can be very helpful. Keeping the home remedy on hand each season can also help with health. I ended up with four diplomas and over 1000 goud, everyone had an "ok life". The game takes about 30-45 minutes to play. It's kind of like a variation on Oregon Trail.
It was fun to see the Creole words they work in here and there. This is obviously a simplified version of the ongoing dilemma, especially as having books at home isn't all that useful when no one in your family knows how to read anyway, but it does illustrate the problems in balancing health, money, and education to try to get ahead when you are starting with basically nothing. To be more realistic, probably all the family would start out with a health issue of some kind, and no starting cash at all, and the family farm would disappear if you didn't have someone tend to it.... but I guess that would make for a really depressing game.
Your task is to get a family of 5 through four years, split into four seasons (although technically Haiti really only experiences two seasons, so they are kind of stretching that a bit). At the beginning of each season, you can buy supplies at the store if you have money, then decide what each family member will do for that season: go to school, work/volunteer, stay home and rest, work on the family farm, or go to the hospital. There are four different goals that you'll need to balance: education, money, happiness, and health.
A strategy that worked for me was to pretty much avoid the school and instead buy books at the start of each season, then send everyone off to work or volunteer. Over time, if you volunteer then the local NGO will build things like community centers and libraries, where they hold events that will help boost your family's education anyway. Also, you can pretty much ignore the family farm unless there's no job available for the youngest kid. You should also keep the lifestyle on "good life" as much as possible (if you get too low on money they will bump you down automatically to "poor life", but that makes health a big issue). Definitely buy the market stall when they give you the chance, and investing in things like shoes, a bicycle, and livestock can be very helpful. Keeping the home remedy on hand each season can also help with health. I ended up with four diplomas and over 1000 goud, everyone had an "ok life". The game takes about 30-45 minutes to play. It's kind of like a variation on Oregon Trail.
It was fun to see the Creole words they work in here and there. This is obviously a simplified version of the ongoing dilemma, especially as having books at home isn't all that useful when no one in your family knows how to read anyway, but it does illustrate the problems in balancing health, money, and education to try to get ahead when you are starting with basically nothing. To be more realistic, probably all the family would start out with a health issue of some kind, and no starting cash at all, and the family farm would disappear if you didn't have someone tend to it.... but I guess that would make for a really depressing game.