Kapakai Gamer Club
DUGER is a non-profit organization of adult mentors, who want to contribute to equalizing differences in living conditions among young people in Norway. We do this through project work based on mentoring, which can give young people between the ages of 10 and 24 community values and necessary competence skills during their upbringing. We work with UN guidelines to reduce the digital gap among children and young people.
DUGER has recently started a project called Kapakai Gamer Club and want to start a collaboration with other civil society organizations to broader the engagement for this mentoring initiative for young students who live in Bjerke and who are between 10 and 16 years of age. We do this to ensure that all of them get the same number of opportunities to participate in the digital development taking place in Norwegian society.
We have received support from The Norwegian Children and young directorate (BUFDIR) and bought some equipment such as gamer machines with accessories such as game consoles and VR glasses to play video games. These usually require a large investment from families with children. With the help of these, the club will promote 4 different types of activities that depend on what kind of collaboration agreement is signed upon with other supporting organizations and whereas we can gather more different mentors, interested to help us to carry out these kind of activities togheter.
Background for the project
We are aware that there may be several reasons why some children in the target group may have a greater risk of ending up outside in several areas. However, we know that when society becomes increasingly digitized, both social networks and access to the labour market will also become so. That is why we focus on projects that can strengthen both digital skills and collaboration skills among them. In this way, we not only keep them off the streets, or prevent social isolation, but also ensure good growing conditions with playful leisure activities with the help of skills competence options, which they can use later in life. Both when it comes to their choice of subject, when they get to upper secondary school and not least to get better chances of getting a job in the knowledge economy.
4 kinds of leisure activities
We offer 4 kinds of complementary activities, that we could cooperate on based on our activity calendar. First, since we are promoting a gamer club project it is obvious that it always be possible to play curated video games with us for free while we hold open. But, we would also like to complement it with an extra free activity at a time. The number of participants in every activity will vary. This depends on how many wants to try something new or whether the activity arouses interest because of previous experience. We are thinking of starting from the first weeks in October 2024, every week from 14:00 until 18:00. On weekdays and depending on the agreement this can happen also on weekends. Below is a short information about each activity and suggestions for which days these can be carried out.
1) Play (Tuesday to Thursday). Those who are keen to gain access to play with technology can learn to use new and master exciting digital skills and tools not only alone but together with others.
2) Build (Tuesday) for those who like building and putting things together, improving their social skills, getting to know peers, and establishing a social network across school circles.
3) Create (Wednesday). For the creative, who can find out that other “young artists” in their district within Oslo city have the same interest in video games, captivating narrative stories, graphics, or music, and pool their strength to create something unique together?
4) Share (Thursday). The club offers many exciting experiences so it becomes necessary to learn how to use media channels to share your own experience with the rest of the city or maybe the world, gain respect and recognition, and a unique sense of mastery and belonging in an inclusive environment.
