EDLS story: Cités Unies France Escape game to raise awareness on the SDGs

To support the European Days of Local Solidarity (EDLS) 2019 campaign, PLATFORMA is publishing a series of success stories and testimonies of cities and regions engaged in development education and awareness raising on decentralised cooperation. The third “EDLS story” focuses on Cités Unies France’s Escape game to raise awareness on the SDGs.

Bringing innovative solutions to mobilising and educating global citizenship is essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Target 4.7 of the 2030 Agenda focuses on learning how to live together in a sustainable way.

Target 4.7 reminds that education on Global Citizenship Education (GCED) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) make it possible to acquire “the knowledge and skills necessary to promote sustainable development, sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality and the culture of peace and non-violence” (more information about the target 4.7).

Cités Unies France has been working on the SDGs for several years and realised that for many elected officials and civil servants, this concept of Sustainable Development Goals remained very vague or even unknown. The French association of local and regional governments proposed an innovative approach to this, during its annual “Rencontres” in Paris in July 2019.  not a conference nor a brochure, but an immersion at the heart of the SDG’ issues.

Hence the idea of an Escape game which, in an hour, offers a group of 8 people to take up a challenge: finding a manuscript containing the solution to rebuild a sustainable world, following an industrial disaster. To achieve this result, participants had to solve a whole series of enigmas that led them to address the SDGs, the challenges it involves on a daily basis, and how everyone can grasp them.

The objective was to demonstrate that:

•  The SDGs concern us all, in all aspects of life, on social, economic and environmental issues
• This is a universal issue, which concerns both northern and southern countries
• These SDGs can be the basis of other models of local governance, more transversal and inclusive

A hundred people have thus experienced this immersion. Following their reactions and suggestions, it has been proposed to “model” this game and to circulate it within willing French local and regional governments. This work should start soon.