Master of Disaster to Make India Disaster Prepared

(prsubmissionsite) On 28^th Feb 2020, ASSIST in association with the Board Room organized the gaming event, ‘Master of Disaster’. As we all know, India ranks 5^th in the Global Climate Risk Index.  ASSIST India is working on a tool to equip us better when dealing with large scale natural disasters, the likelihood of which are increasing due to climate change. ASSIST is focusing their efforts at the confluence of education and disaster preparedness, by building a toolkit, the ’Master Of Disaster’ to educate our youth on how they can prepare for and protect themselves during a natural disaster. This toolkit takes the form of a game that children in schools can play, to imbibe and understand the basics of disaster response and preparedness. MOD was first created in the Philippines at ASSIST’s headquarters and has worked wonders since then.

ASSIST has launched a campaign on Wishberry, a crowdfunding platform, to raise funds for contextual localisation and translation of the game, so that they are able to engage with children in India in a manner specific to their lives. The event was organized in order to discuss and promote ASSIST’s efforts in bringing MOD to India. It was attended by a mix of people including professional gamers, young professionals from the start-up world, college students, kids, teachers, NGOs and corporate professionals.  The free event took place from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Starting off by explaining the need for disaster preparedness the organizers hosted the game to give the audience a taste of the game. The game received a great feedback from the audience. Comments stated that, audience had fun while learning such indispensable concepts for safe survival. It surprised them that important concepts such as disaster preparedness can be taught in a fun way with a simple tool like the board game, ‘Master of Disaster’.