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Tag: education

The SWAG 1Y Anniversary Summer Edition launched – free card design templates, a Multiplayer Story and a course

The SWAG 1Y Anniversary Summer Edition launched – free card design templates, a Multiplayer Story and a course

July 15th 2025 by André Boeing

☀️ Free Wastemonsters- and Recycling-Mod Card Templates (A6 standard postcard format) representing real waste types and recycling methods — plus free bonus graphics and a video tutorial course on how to adapt the game cards to your context in Education for Sustainable Development and your region, using the free, open-source graphic design software Krita.

☀️ “SWA – The Great Cycle”: An interactive story for 1–3 players as an immersive introduction to the Smart Waste Agency Game (The SWAG), the World of waste types and recycling — featuring different pathways to face our global waste challenge. Also suitable for classroom settings.

☀️ Our 1-Year Summer Anniversary Edition of The SWAG, co-developed with 64 young designers aged 7–15 during the 2024 summer and autumn holiday Playshops in Germany, is out!

You can join the free course, download the material, and experience the story on our website:

🌐 www.the-swag.eu

Thanks a lot Odin Mühlenbein, AI Tinkerer on a chosenpath.ai, for collaborating on this story and the invitation to test the AI story engine in beta — it rocks!

Thank you so much to all the young participants and youth organization partners who co-created during our holiday Playshops 2024. Our photos give a good impression of the analogue and digital skills, and the joyful, playful creation of games for a serious topic.

📷Summer 2024 Photostory

We are now looking forward to see, what you will do with the Card templates and Story on the-swag.eu 🙂

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New Partnership with The Jena Declaration at UNESCO Chair on Global Understanding for Sustainability

It is with great joy to announce our fresh ktopia project partnership with The Jena Declaration (TJD) at the UNESCO Chair on Global Understanding for Sustainability.

The principles of the Declaration resonate deeply with Ktopia values and approach to open, grassroots educational game world design intended to spark joy—joy in actively becoming involved in “The Great Quest” of learning to live sustainably, regeneratively, planetary.

“Meaningful, sustainable change can only be achieved if every person on the planet changes their everyday routines, practices, and mindset. This must be true in business, government, schools, and at home.” is one of TJD’s principles.

Play sparks curiosity and invites us to face challenges with joy. Games offer ways to explore, grow, and even learn through failure. Ktopia invites people into narrative education worlds about sustainable living and supports them in co-creating open-source, analogue–digital games as Open Educational Resources. (OER)

In our partnership we wish to explore collaboration in the playful appropriation of the principles of The Jena Declaration through approaches inspired by co-creative game design, prioritizing Africa–Europe partnerships. We also explore collaborative promotion and dissemination of Ktopia eduGames (SWAG, FSYSgame) in combination with the principles of the TJD.

The last weeks have been a wonderful “getting to know each other” with TJD’s Dr. Martin Repohl and UNESCO Chair Prof. Dr. Benno Werlen. To experience Benno’s passion, compassion, commitment, impressive background, and wide, interdisciplinary thinking is inspiring. To join a rich, soil network of currently 65 worldwide TJD project partners—including the World Academy of Art and Science as well as the Club of Rome—makes us grateful.

To a fruitful 🌳 and wonderful partnership. A joyful “Cheers!” 🥂

with our ktopia project partners Ibrahim Gadzama, Jana Fuhrmann-Heise and ktopia founder André Boeing

🌱 Joining the Climate Education Landscape Innovation Pot by the Hessian Ministry for Agriculture and the Environment, Germany

Grateful and excited to be part of a 6-month agile innovation journey, initiated by the Hessian Ministry for Agriculture and the Environment, Germany.

Starting next week at the Forest School in Kassel, I’ll join a small group of selected innovators to co-create impactful solutions with a special focus on regenerative food systems. In just two weeks, we’ll shape our ideas into a concrete development plan—and then sprint forward, supported by dedicated funding, until November.

The Climate Education Landscape is a project of the Hessian Ministry for Agriculture and the Environment. The City of Kassel, the Working Group for Nature and Environmental Education in Hesse (ANU), and the World Garden Witzenhausen are jointly implementing the project as a coordination office for Kassel and the surrounding area.

They serve as the regional points of contact. The initiative is part of the Hesse Climate Plan in the area of action titled “Education and Research.”

The goal is to embed climate protection and sustainability structurally within local educational landscapes for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). To this end, the full range of local stakeholders from education, municipalities, administration, business, civil society, and climate protection should be involved. The initiation phase of the Climate Education Landscapes is planned to run until mid-2028.