[sl] Fourth of Mariel's Voices of Youth, Global Kids Related Post
Educating and Raising Awareness Through Virtual Reality III
Hello, everyone!
This is Mariel –Voyunicef- again. This time I am posting the last blog =( on the A World Fit for Children Festival as it’s reached an end.
I will begin by telling you about the last events.
After the superamazing events on Wednesday, it was time to come to reality on Thursday. And I do mean ‘reality’. Thursday was the deadline for the building projects, which meant it was time for judging! I was one of the teen judges, and I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that I actually grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled endless notes and scores to attempt to give the fairest scores to each team. It was really hard as projects really went over my expectations.
So, how we judged… Well, I can speak about my case and Nafiza GKid’s. First, we ‘toured’ around all the projects, played, read their notes, etcetera. We became even more familiar with them. At this stage, I had mum come to the computer and see where I had been spending so many hours. She was impressed! I wonder if she will ever consider using virtual reality in her philosophy lessons, hehe, as she is a teacher. We played the games in the projects for a while before I actually began giving grades.
Where to begin?
There were five main fields we had to grade: whether projects were creative, aesthetic, educational, interactive and had the information they were required to. We tried to judge each project individually (independently from others) but also in relation to the other projects, which made the process take a few hours. There were thirteen projects, and all of them deserved a lot of attention.
On Friday, we finally had the awards ceremony. Most team members were present, though some could not make it due to time zone differences. Tabitha, Barry and Rafi from Global Kids hosted it. In it, people were reminded a bit of the mission of Voices of Youth and of this contest.
So, the awards…
Most Realistic Build - Team AWU
Most Popular Build - Team Porot
Third Prize - Tie between Team Zen 
and Teh Sexy Sploders 
Second Prize - Team F&V
Grand Prize - Team Porot (see above)
About the winning projects...
Team AWU built the representation of a school built in Afghanistan sponsored by UNICEF. It received the award to the most realistic build as it looked like a real school! The blackboards, benches and even the balls in the little gymnasium represented the real ones quite well.
Team Zen built a school/orphanage to represent the need children have to live in a safe environment not only to develop physically, but to be able to pursue their studies.
The Sexy Sploders built a sort of exhibition/memorial to raise awareness on hunger. They mentioned a few ways to take action against it!
Team F&V built a sort of building in which they had an exhibit on lifestyles and poverty. In the last stage, they made sure to include links and suggestions to take action against the issue.
Team Porot built a school that could be built in a low-resource village (theirs was specifically for Africa) where children, without needing a big investment, would have access to a safe environment where they could study. They won the award to the most popular build as they are the ones who received most votes throughout the showcase week, and also the grand prize as they built the best project.
