Introducing two brand new Sustainable Palm Oil Games

We’re always looking for new and innovative ways to bring conservation to life for all ages. Whether we’re engaging with people at the zoo, visiting schools, or working with local and international communities, we tailor our approach depending on audiences and setting

In recent years we’ve found that games are a great way to engage young people with difficult topics. Conservation issues can be complicated and often have complex solutions. Games gives us the freedom to explore different choices without the risk of real world consequences, and give us the opportunity to look at things from different perspectives.

Back in 2015, we worked with Coney, makers of interactive games and virtual adventures, to develop an educational game for Manchester Science Festival. The aim was to raise awareness of the growing palm oil industry and how it’s affecting wildlife around the world.

We wanted to explore these themes again but for a younger audience. Working closely with Coney, we’ve developed two brand new games to help young people form their own opinions about palm oil and the best ways to help wildlife.

Our Sustainable Palm Oil campaign encourages the use of sustainable palm oil in every day products to help prevent extinction around the world. By creating demand for sustainable palm oil, we support the creation of wildlife corridors and help ensure that no more rainforests are cut down for the purpose of unsustainable palm oil.

This campaign has really captured the hearts of many school children that we’ve worked with over the years. It’s a subject that causes a lot of debate but also encourages a lot of empathy for the wildlife affected. We’ve also seen increased understanding for people living in the countries where oil palm is grown. It can be a challenging topic in schools but we find that by actively engaging with young people, their responses are incredibly thoughtful.

The Green Gold Game

Upper KS2 pupils will explore the themes of sustainable palm oil by playing different roles including plantation owners, governments and consumers. Join Flora on an educational adventure to learn why sustainably grown palm oil is the best choice we can make as consumers.

We took the game into a number of school settings to playtest with our target audience of 9-11 years old, and the results were very positive. One teacher reported:

“The class had the time of their lives. They were right at the end of their palm oil topic so had already learned quite a lot, but testing this game gave them a practical understanding of it all. All in all – they loved it!”

High School Time Traveller

Designed for mobile and aimed at students aged 14+, this game transports you through time to help your friend in Borneo stop the rainforest being chopped down for an oil palm plantation. Use various persuasion tactics to influence different people in school, become a sponsor and gain the school’s support in creating a sustainable plantation.

Not only does the game have fun scenarios to play out, it also encourages the player to understand that to make changes you often have to pull on different strings within a system in order to change things on a systemic level.

“By playing a game which is modelled on a system, pupils can experience what it’s like inside that system. Exploring different roles and perspectives helps them start to understand the potential for change.”

– Tassos Stevens, Coney Director

We were very much inspired by our Sustainable Palm Oil Communities project to make High School Time Traveller. Since Chester became the first Sustainable Palm Oil City, we’ve been working with other communities around UK to influence various supply chains such as restaurants, school catering providers and businesses. This is to ensure sustainable palm oil is used in all of their products, creating many more sustainable palm oil communities. Action at a community level is systemic but it’s also more within reach for individual activists.

In a similar way, High School Time Traveller is a microcosm of our work with communities, showing the player that we have to work with lots of different people within a community in order to make real change happen.