What is well –rounded education? Is it just learning the subjects taught at school, passing them with flying colours, getting into a good college and making a good living?
Now picture this- children growing up in an environment where they never once come across the term ‘bullying’, nor do they experience it. On the other hand their daily subjects are learnt through acts of kindness, compassion and empathy. What’s more? The fun part is that they learn these though card games and video games! That is exactly what Greg Acuna’s brain child Acting Kindly @ School is doing.
A visionary who thought about building a website even before the birth of the internet, a strong advocate of kindness, a technological maverick, a director, writer, entrepreneur and much much more. That is Greg Acuna for you. Greg who originally hails from Los Angeles, California made Goa his home 16 years back. He fell in love with the place as it was a perfect blend of the east and the west. A man who has donned several hats throughout his life, Greg Acuna started Planet Earthlings and Zarbul , an educational gaming platform to empower children to change the world.
What’s the game about?
Acting Kindly @School is a printed card game that consists of Action cards, Switch cards, People cards, Wild cards, Create and Plan cards. The players play through various acts of kindness and co-operation. Through this game, teams switch players and hence children get to learn how to collaborate and co-operate with all sorts of people. It is very interesting, fun, highly creative and everyone wins.
Greg says that one of his happiest moments was when he took the cards and made students in various schools in Goa try it out.
“It became an instant hit and I saw two children who had just had a tiff in the morning, playing happily and helping each other in the afternoon while trying out the cards. That is exactly what I intended to achieve through the game – to teach kindness and compassion” he says.
Greg and his team want to get the “Classroom Pack” which has 15 decks across hundreds of schools across India.
For this, he has started a fundraiser campaign
http://www.ketto.org/fundraiser/actingkindly
The campaign is to do the printing of the first decks and Classroom Pack boxes, shipping and promotion.
Zarbul
Planet Earthlings is Greg’s company that created Zarbul, a 3D virtual world to revolutionize education by creating a cooperative and collaborative educational gaming universe. Players choose an alien avatar and enter their spaceship to travel to theme based planets to study, have fun and help each other. Acting Kindly @School is the deck of cards that has been replicated into a printed card game.
Zarbul is being created as a special universe with a sense of character, an ever-expanding narrative and an overall sense of purpose which can empower youth in new and yet to be imagined ways. Through Zarbul one can play and also help others and reach different levels through their acts.
Remember as a little kid how we would play games using weapons and destroy cities, buildings and entire dynasties though violence? Now how cool is it to actually play video games making it an altogether productive, learning and fun activity?!
Making the world a better place
A child treated kindly will grow up to be a kind adult. What is more important in this universe is to make people kinder, happier and henceforth healthier. It will also be a pathway to building self- confidence and a sense of belonging. Acting Kindly is surely the best avenue to nurture that at the grass root level.
There is so much going on in today’s world that people tend to ignore the power of kindness, gratitude and the simple acts of humanity. Through Acting Kindly Greg is sure that the world will become a better place. Everyone can do their bit and so could you. Let’s join hands to make this extremely unique and highly interactive game a huge success for the future of the present as well as the future generations.
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