Sibel’s Journey is an interactive children’s game about the LGBT+ community, gender, and sexuality
We’ll be blunt. In the year 2020 we need a game like Sibel’s Journey now, more than ever.
In November this year the UK government made the decision to axe school LGBT+ bullying projects, all despite an earlier pledge to “continue investing in school programmes targeting homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying.” To say that LGBT+ education is important is an understatement, it can help not just closeted children and teens, but those who aren’t too sure what they can expect from the LGBT+ community.
Enter Food for Thought, a Berlin-based project that was founded in 2019. They’re also the team behind Sibel’s Journey, an interactive children’s game that focuses on Sibel, a 13-year old girl who is travelling to Berlin to surprise her family. On the way she encounters a number of different people, with whom “she gets to learn about different ways of living and loving,” (via Kickstarter.)
The aim of the game is to educate children and teenagers about LGBT+ matters yes, but it also focuses on body positivity, sexuality, gender, and, more importantly, consent.
As described in their Kickstarter page, the learning material in Sibel’s Journey is “playfully discovered by the young people themselves over the course of the four episodes. You deal with the question “What is normal?”, Your own experiences and your own identity. Right from the start they have to make their own decisions and apply the knowledge they have acquired in the course of the game.”
As stated above, children’s education about these topics are so very important for their growth. A game like Sibel’s Journey would be a fun, interactive step forward – one that I feel schools need when it comes to LGBT+ communities.
Food for Thought are currently looking for funding over at their Kickstarter page – so if you would like to help Sibel’s Journey to make its way – officially – onto PC and smart devices, then go over there and throw some money their way.
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