Video Games
Bridging Over Conflict

Games for Peace is pioneering the use of Video Games for fostering dialog and trust between young people in conflict zones.

We use popular, commercial video games like Minecraft, whose themes revolve around the ideas of communication and collaboration within a virtual world. By exploiting their mass appeal, our programs aim to create a new opportunity for a shared, positive experience between children in Israel, Palestine, the Middle East and other parts of the world suffering from conflict.

Rationale: Why Video Games?

Children, everywhere, love to play games. Computer games in particular have become a widely popular form of entertainment in recent years. As a platform for promoting dialogue, video games and online games in particular combine several outstanding advantages over traditional approaches:

By focusing on one of the activities best enjoyed by children and young adults, Games for Peace programs naturally draw a larger game-loving audience, including those outside the natural “pro-peace” camp.

Among the major challenges of traditional approaches are the logistics, costs and complexities involved in bringing together children from territories in a state of conflict or tension. Online games dissolve borders – physical, national or emotional – and have the unique ability to connect unprecedented numbers of players from the privacy and safety of their home computer.

In a video game, every player is equal. Socioeconomic, national and even religious differences momentarily dissolve, forming a unique window for unbiased dialogue.

Our Programs

The Play2Talk
School Program

Play2Talk uses the popular game Minecraft to connect between Arab and Jewish schoolchildren in Israel. Once a week, children from a pair of Jewish and Arab schools log in from their school’s computer room to the Play2Talk Minecraft world. Rather than having one school play against the other, the children are divided into two teams – each mixing participants from the two schools. With every encounter the children are presented with a set of fun challenges that require increasing levels of communication and collaboration.

Halfway through the program, the children meet face-to-face and discover the real people behind the Minecraft avatars. The blend of virtual and real-life experiences has a lasting effect: Participants not only overcome negative stereotypes of the other group – many of them also add their counterparts to their social media circles and stay in touch.

Want your school to take part in one of our programs?

The eSports
Training Program

The eSports Training Program is a new initiative in which Jewish and Arab youth engage in weekly eSports video game training, with the help of top tier streamers.
eSports video games are immensely popular and share a few similarities with physical team sports – they require teamwork, skill training, discipline and communication between players. 

The eSports Training Program encourages sustained play and interaction in heterogeneous eSports teams by training and focusing on social interaction, cooperation and mutual help.
The eSports Training Program is aimed at teens aged 14-18 and is suitable for a classroom setting or for a distance learning setting.

Want your school to take part in one of our programs?

Impact

In 2017 The Play2Talk program was awarded the prestigious Intercultural Innovation Award by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and BMW group. It was also selected finalist in the WeWork Creator Awards, a global initiative to recognize outstanding creativity for tackling social challenges.

A study conducted by Dr. Rony Berger, an expert in the field of conflict mediation and mitigation, led to strong support to the effectiveness of the program, showing participants expressing much higher willingness to interact with children from the other national group, reporting much less prejudicial feelings and much more positive thoughts towards members of the other national group.

Following those promising results, Play2Talk was recognized by Israeli ministry of education as an official educational program.
Program number 2909 in GEFEN.

To this day, Play2Talk has impacted:

0
Schools
0
Students

Indirect Impact extends to families, teachers and students’ outer circles

Want your school to take part in one of our programs?

Media

Games for Peace in the 2017
Intercultural innovation Award by UNAOC and BMW Group:

Games for Peace in TEDx:

Games for Peace in the
Israeli national television:

Team

Games for Peace was founded by Uri Mishol, an Israeli high-tech veteran, along with partners such as Dr. Dudi Peles ,Hans Shakur, Yoad Snapir, Ido Tal, and other people from the fields of research, computer game development, education and peacemaking.

Dr. Dudi Peles, one of Israel’s leading experts on the cross between Video Games and Education, serves as Games for Peace’s executive chairman.
Maha Aburass, serves as Games for Peace’s program manager and educational content developer.

Help us develop this innovative platform for building trust and dialog between children. Support Games for Peace today for a better tomorrow!
For more information: info@gamesforpeace.org

Partners

Contact

Help us develop this innovative platform for building trust and dialog between children. Support Games for Peace today for a better tomorrow!

© Games for Peace 2020 3 Arieh Shenkar St., Herzliya Pituach, Israel