Researchers from the Alliance and partners are testing fsysgame / Food Heroes in 37 Kenyan schools to explore how a comic and card game can help children understand food systems, biodiversity, and nutrition while inspiring real-world action. Story published on Alliance Biodiversity & CIAT:
https://alliancebioversityciat.org/stories/card-game-transform-children-food-systems
“Policy-makers and scientists dominate high-level sustainability debates but any decision that follows has consequences for ordinary people in their local communities and environments. We asked experts to reflect on the importance of embracing a culturally informed, bottom-up approach to the sustainability discourse and action.”
I am grateful and honored to have taken part in the collective co‑creation of this viewpoint and weaving “Solid Science for Serious Fun”, our Storybilities, Playabilities and Sustainabilities into the multi-perspective viewpoint.
Publication in Nature Sustainablity July 2026:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-026-01898-5
Open Access read only Link:
Werlen, B., Jacobs, G., McBean, G. et al. Culturalizing sustainability. Nat Sustain (2026).
Are you planning to participate in the 🪴 🌴 🦋 🐝 3rd National Agroecology Symposium 🌾 🍉 🫚 🎈 tomorrow, Wednesday 22, and Thursday 23 July in Nairobi, Kenya?
Together with WingFarm and ISFAA Kenya, we from the CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT have organised a Youth in Agroecology Action lab. In the session, we will introduce our FoodHeroes comic and game that we co-developed with fsysgame.org and The Grass Company Limited in collaboration with DRYLANDS NATURAL RESOURCES CENTRE (DNRC) and Community Sustainable Agriculture and Healthy Environmental Program (CSHEP).
✅ Play interactive games & learn
✅ Engage in powerful dialogues
✅ Co-create real agroecological solutions
✅ Build networks, make commitments & take action!
Find out more about our Food Heroes educational package here:
https://www.fsysgame.org/food-heroes-expansion/
A Comic in a library of high level science publications? Our collaborative “Food Heroes Comic: Growing great food, seeds, trees & knowledge. No. 1. CGIAR Science Program on Multifunctional Landscapes” has been published as an Open Access Resource by CGIAR.org last month. The first Print edition is going around schools and we heard, that quite some Scientists were trying to get their hands on copies in the CGIAR centres as well 😉
Its a wonderful, gratifying feeling to witness Art, comic- and cardgame pop culture, 2050 Future Now themes in Tandem with the Science of Agroecology, integrated, synergistic, Multifunctional Landscapes and the Sustainable Development Goals. It sure makes Education for students AND teachers more exciting, immersed and joyful as well.
Thank you so much for the iterative, collaborative comic- and gamedesign development quest + shared fruits’n seeds, we are discovering together since February, Lisa Elena Fuchs Samantha Waki Bela Sharma CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes The Grass Company Limited fsysgame.org
And thank you, Benno Werlen The Jena Declaration and UNESCO Chair on Global Understanding for Sustainability for the partnership on joyful, playful pathways to learn to understand our Sustain Abilities and practice them in our daily life.
Free to download here:
Our Gameplay from the Do-it-Yourself Print version as an online Player vs AI “coopetetive duel game” (same rules ) is live. Reinforcing knowledge from all Agroecology-, Multifunctional Landscapes and Sustainable Development Goal sets require SIRSS ! : smart icon recognition strategy skills to match all challenge icons.
From idea to done and run of the “fsys Card-Explorer App” in 2.5 hours good vibe coding. With Claude? NOPE! :: Open-Source, running on my Laptop without subscription and token limits.
Explore Cards and launch the Browser App:
fsysgame.org/card-explorer
“making of” recipe:
– Open-Source ZED 1.0 Code Editor:
https://zed.dev/
– and the already built in Open Code, Zen/Big Pickle Coding Agent from:
https://opencode.ai/
We used react.js to achieve our goals.
Click on single Agroecology, Multifunctional Landscapes and Sustainable Development Goal Icons to explore, which cards feature the icon and how the cards are connected through other shared icons. A click on the card tells you, what is is about. You can choose multiple icons to display cards, which contain them. Enjoy 🙂
The CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes program, together with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, is proud to introduce the Food Heroes Expansion — a free, printable card game designed for schools, clubs, and homes, bringing food system science to life for young people everywhere 🌍
Every card is an action. Save seeds 🌾. Build compost ♻️. Restore biodiversity 🐝. Shorten food chains 🚜. Advocate for your land 📣. Players don’t just learn the concepts they practice them in the real world.
✅ 60 CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes Kenya Series collectible cards (Food Heroes Expansion + Mapping) with realworld impACT missions to play ✅ Agroecology-, Multifunctional Landscaping- and Sustain Abilities Sheet for strategic play ✅ The “FutureNow” Comic: A tool for both agroecology education and English language learning ✅ A unique “Coopetitive” game for solving global food system challenges in 3 rounds (= 3 project years)
I am sooo excited, proud and grateful, what we all have co-created and literally brought to the home, school and club table. Free like seeds to plant’n play in your community. Happy crafting and playing! 🙂
infos and downloads:
https://en.fsysgame.org/diy-kit.html
The fsysgame Food Heroes Expansion was developed in cooperation with the Multifunctional Schools Network in Kenya, established with CSHEP and DNRC in Kiambu, Kajiado, and Makueni Counties, under the CGIAR Science Program on Multifunctional Landscapes, led by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, in collaboration with The Grass Company, Nairobi and fsysgame.org
Yeahh 🙂 Our co-created Tabletop Game has been just released as a Box Version and is now available for Schools for playful integration into Waste, Recycling and Circular Economy education.
Official announcement, City of Kassel, Germany:
https://www.kassel.de/pressemitteilungen/april/smartwasteagency.php
Game Website in German:
https://swa.futurespace.org/
English Website and Materials:
https://www.the-swag.eu/
How does that fit together? “Watt”, if all educational comic illustrations were created on just one consumer graphic card on a self hosted open-source AI model? Running smoothly on 17 Watt energy consumption in idle work mode and a maximum of 435 Watt, when 10 concurrent students generated at the same time from multiple devices in a classroom (63 degree Celsius heat development during peak performance.
This refurbished system can run offline on a lower mid end consumer Gaming PC/Laptop graphic card, which could run solar/wind powered, solo or in a local grid for the 1h image generation.
Thats the Beauty of AI evolution today. We are down-scaling at the grassroot up!
Last Monday. Mission briefing:
I developed the Web App from Open-Source building blocks (quick recipe below) in 16 non-stop hours (the first 8 hours figuring out a general model and direction, slightly panicking at the end, because I had no happy solution, yet), then rented an on-demand server pod for 0,60$ per minute to make the App available for school pilot 1 a couple hours later. Between school days we only payed 0.02 $ per minute for the sleep mode of our App server and GPU.
All running great last week – until it became 15 concurrent users this week, each generating 3 image variations with their manually written prompt and the coolest filter out there.. then our GPU “burned” into the offline at 65 degree Celsius and our Ubuntu Linux got hickups.. 😀 The stress test, web developers are in a strange way happy about (while we heavily sweat).
See Results on https://www.fsysgame.org
Soft Launch Announce before the more official/detailed post. Incredible grateful for the collaboration on our first public food system edu comic iteration 0.9, a low consumption Open-Source AI Image Generation App Development and pilots in 3 schools in Kenya.
The Comic is freely available in print and screen formats for fun and educational settings to learn about agroecology principles, regenerative food systems, practicing our sustain abilities and creative Future Now Agency. Including a starterdeck of fsys game cards.
This comic was developed in cooperation with the Multifunctional Schools Network in hashtag#Kenya, established with CSHEP and DNRC in Kiambu, Kajiado, and Makueni Counties, under the CGIAR Science Program on Multifunctional Landscapes, led by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT – Lisa Elena Fuchs and team in collaboration with The Grass Company Samantha Waki and fsysgame.org Ktopia André Boeing Ibrahim Gadzama
Thank you so much to all collaborators… I have learned / I am learning so much from you, your amazing, valuable work and about the #agroecology #foodsystem principles while I worked on the Comic. And I am just beginning this learning adventure….as does the comic story…
Freely available for Print and Screen here (includes pages to draw in, develop future char, track missions and points ++) + many more updates on:
https://www.fsysgame.org
Many of us contributors are also members of Catalyst Now and the Conscious Food Systems Alliance where this is part of our multi-stakeholder, art and food system, living lab case study thing we collaborate on with passion.
💚 🙏 grateful and yeah: Proud as well 🙂