Grade 7-8 boys nominated for a special GSL commendation award

The Grade 7 and 8 boys of Swiss International School in Qatar (SISQ) made it to the Global Social Leaders (GSL) Pivot Award semi-finals for their ‘Gaming for the Goals’ project.

GSL Pivot Award recognises teams who have kept pace with a rapidly changing environment and adapted their project to be more effective or relevant to the needs of their community.

Inspired by ‘Free Rice’, an educational trivia game that helps a person improve himself while supporting UN World Food Programme’s work to reach zero hunger, wherein SISQ has already participated and was able to raise over 262,000 grains of rice to date, ‘Gaming for the Goals’ aimed to use people’s screen time to feed children using a gaming tournament (e-sport games). Ralph, Grade 7, also made a great game for GSL, inspiring Grade 6 and getting almost 200 visits. The game is used for their own platform of Roblox and they prototyped it in class.

However, due to Covid restrictions, the tournament was eventually carried out as gaming sessions for mental health and friendly games. The Ministry of Public Health’s Deputy Director for Mental Health Services, who was invited by the Grade 7-8 boys to examine their research for this project, commended their undertaking and agreed that gaming is an important tool for young people to de-stress and form communities during the lockdown, thus improving mental health. Adding the fact that it’s for a good cause makes it more laudable.

Aside from this project imparting a powerful message that gaming enhances mental health and only becomes addictive if not supervised properly, the group ended up with QAR 700 even through the friendly games and the school has already raised 262,000 grains of rice to date through the Free Rice app.

🍚 To take part and help SISQ group raise more grains of rice, go to https://www.freerice.com/, sign up, click Groups from the menu, join existing group (the SISQ group) by entering the group code U8EAYN5D and play for a good cause!