Summary of Context and Overall Objectives of GAP.
International peace-building and peacekeeping missions respond to complex problems and are critical for building more secure societies for the citizens of Europe and beyond. The personnel deployed on these missions (militaries, police forces, civil organizations) come from diverse organizations and nations; coordination and cooperation between these individuals and organizations, and the local populations, is challenging operationally. While mandated to cooperate together, diversity in organizations, gender and culture (national, ethnicity, sexuality, religion) make mutual understanding, communication and cooperation vital for the mission to be effective, yet difficult to achieve in practice. In particular, security cannot be understood without considering the role of gender, both in terms of the challenge of increasing the currently small number of women deployed as peacekeepers (4% of military, 10% of police and 30% of civilian personnel) in what is a heavily masculine culture in missions. This is particularly important in light of the documented positive impact of women peacekeepers have on achieving the goals of peacekeeping missions, particularly improving the impact on, and role of, local women in achieving these goals, and in sustaining peace. Current training puts few resources into training personnel in these critical soft skills of communication, cooperation, gender awareness and cultural awareness.
Gaming for Peace (GAP) provides an efficient and effective means of developing and delivering a curriculum in those skills. GAP derives a curriculum in 2 steps: first, GAP reviewed the state of the art in Conflict Prevention and Peace Building training and relevant soft skills, and in relevant state of the art in Serious Games, and combined the results of this review with interviews documenting the experiences of 177 military, police and civilian personnel who have been deployed on peacekeeping missions. GAP developed a curriculum in the soft skills of Gender Awareness, Cultural Awareness and Communication. GAP embedded this curriculum, including in-game assessment, in a digital role playing game, which simulates scenarios from peacekeeping missions. GAP also provides pre- and post-play tests and reflection exercises to capture the progress in the curriculum of personnel through playing the role-playing game. GAP developed a library of learning materials, and these and discussion can be completed between the segments of the game. The game can be accessed via the Internet and delivered as part of a ‘blended learning’ package by trainers in a classroom, or used by individual peacekeepers. Consequently, there is no limit on the number of personnel who can be trained. The game can be customized at low cost by different stakeholders/organizations. By using a digital game for delivery of the curriculum, GAP contributes to the creation of a more digitally skilled workforce, and also contributes to the challenge of standardization of assessment in soft skills. It has significant potential for sectoral transfer of a model of curriculum development and assessment of soft skills delivered through a digital role-playing game.
