Can games help to create a better world?
Without doubt- games are attractive. And fun. The number of educative games and those which can help to make the world a little better is growing rapidly.
Did you know that

• Half The Sky Movement: The Game
  is a Facebook adventure that raises awareness & funds to empower women & girls across the world? The Friday facts help to raise awareness on what is wrong? The main character is a woman named Radhika, who is based off of a real woman from India. She conquers quests and creates opportunities for herself, her family, and her community. The game begins in Radhika’s home country of India, and from there she travels to Kenya, Vietnam, Afghanistan and the United States. The player cab become a global leader and a role-model for women worldwide.

  Game trailer
  Interesting also a first review:

  The Half the Sky game starts out simply, as Radhika ponders how to afford a doctor visit for her sick daughter (the answer is to harvest mangoes, which players do for her). Each step requires players to answer a question — for example, should Radhika ask her husband for help or stay silent? Neither answer is wrong, but each takes players on a different route. As her empowerment grows, Radhika moves across the globe to Kenya, Vietnam and Afghanistan. But many of the game choices get progressively darker. One leads to a mother living and her baby dying. Still, some of the game’s nonprofit partners have pushed for even more verisimilitude, Ms. Byrd and Mr. Burak said, questioning, for one, why Radhika can read when many women in her situation would be illiterate.
  Finding that balance — how much to simplify complicated issues, how much fun to include and how much to focus on positive solutions versus grave challenges — has consumed much of the development process, the producers said.
  “It’ll be a very interesting test as to what people’s thresholds are,” said Mr. Weber, of Zynga.

  Players who reach the final level learn about sex trafficking in the United States and can donate to an organization in New York called GEMS, or Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, which helps young women leave the commercial sex industry.

  Rachel Lloyd, the organization’s founder, said that games were “a brave new world for us, too. We’re watching and seeing how this works, if people really do engage in the way that we’d like them to.”

  A Game Aims to Draw Attention to Women’s Issues | Games for Change http://bit.ly/19xc69N via @g4c

• The most common platform for

  gaming in Africa and Asia

  is the mobile phone. However, as Asi Burak, co-founder of GFC, says, getting development games into the right hands is a challenge: “Limited access to technology is prevalent, especially in non-urban and remote areas, where your solutions are needed the most. Or consider language: limited to no reading skills and numerous dialects across a single region or country.”
• The

  Annual games for change festival

  will take place from 22-24 Apri, 2014 in New York?
  What will happen:
  •Access to the world’s top thought leaders in gaming and social change
  •The opportunity to see the year’s best games for change, presented by their developers
  •Awards ceremony celebrating the latest and greatest work from the past year
  More info at

  gamesforchange

  By the way: Quandarywas one winner for Game of the Year 2013
  Players shape the future of a new society while learning how to recognize ethical issues and deal with challenging situations in their own lives.
• You find a

  wide selection of games

  for human rights, poverty, education, health here: http://www.gamesforchange.org/play/

Related material
Blog post: Can gamification change the world? http://wp.me/p2yD3D-18o
Via @nprnews: For Advocacy Groups, Video Games Are The Next Frontier http://n.pr/187iK2h