Global nonprofit community Games for Change and The Connected Learning Lab have announced a new initiative, Raising Good Gamers, a program that aims to change the toxic culture of online gaming by giving voice to the next generation of gamers.
Raising Good Gamers will bring 30 middle and high school teenagers for a TED-Ed program, TED’s youth and education initiative. Five of the participants will then go on to receive coaching by TED-Ed and speak at the inaugural Games for Change Youth Summit, which is tentatively scheduled for June 2021. Featured talks will be upload the TED-Ed Student Talks YouTube channel.
“TED-Ed is on a mission to celebrate and amplify the voices of young people around the world,” said Ashley Kolaya of TED-Ed. “We believe this generation’s creativity, their art, their questions, their play — this generation’s ideas will define the future of our world. While Raising Good Gamers aims to build kinder, more civically engaged gamers, TED-Ed believes the most powerful tool for making that happen are the ideas and voices of those gamers,”
The Raising Good Gamers initiative is made possible by a $100,000 grant from the Susan Crown Exchange.
“We have long imagined an event just for teens, and with support from TED-Ed and the grant from the Susan Crown Exchange, we are bringing that vision to life with the first Games for Change Youth Summit in 2021 featuring youth experts from Raising Good Gamers,” said Susan Pollack, president, Games for Change.
Raising Good Gamers was announced during the Games for Change Festival, which is taking place online right now through July 16.
