We are really pleased that the demo version of Sambaza Peace is ready. Starting in the week of February 15th Merel of Butterfly Works and Mark Kamau of NairoBits will train 20 youth trainers who will then go ahead to facilitate the program and test it in 5 youth centers in and around Urban Nairobi, in the following months.

scene from one cartoon

We have been working hard across two continents since last October and the results are here, we have four cartoons and lessons live, the rest are in the pipeline, the board game is also ready called Geth2o (Get water Ghetto) and the accompanying Mobile game is also nearly ready for launch.

The cartoon texts were written by a group of young people facilitated by Muthoni Garland of Story Moja, the characters were drawn by Joppe of Butterfly Works and the flash animations / cartoons are put together by Tosh of Nairobits, Orayo of Nairobits made the photos while Merel of Butterfly Works and Mark Kamau have been overseeing the whole process and can be rightly proud of the combined results.

Lets see what the young people who use the program think. If you have any comments, let us know, there is a 'discuss' area under every topic. Or join our facebook group via the home page, or drop us a line via contacts

Greetings from the combined Butterfly Works and NairoBits teams

The Geth2o game is part of the Sambaza Peace program:

We are thoroughly enjoying the process of developing a mobile game, about peace and conflict for Kenyan youth. It’s new territory for us albeit a combination of many things we have done before, co-creation, youth communication design, peace and conflict themes, but working for the small screen size and with the J2ME language give  ample challenges to keep us awake. The game is currently being programmed by The Saints and tested by our co-creation partner Nairobits. Cultural correctness not only of language and scenarios but of deeply embedded concepts imperative for a game like this to have impact. Our aim is bringing out real messages on what  the causes of conflict are amongst communities and what types of activities would help create positive change whilst playing a dybnamic game.

The beta version was shown at the Mobile East Africa conference on the 3rd and 4th of Feb in Nairobi and if you are interested please join our Geth2o Game facebook group or ask us for the beta download to help us test it. We would love to hear what people think if it.

Joppe of Butterfly Works is designing extra animations to give more feedback to the player / user as I write