☔️ Officers of Otago
How can we discuss complex policy decisions about climate change across cultures?
In November 2012, the ACCRA Uganda team and the Red Cross Climate Centre planned to visit the pastoral district of Kotido to share the benefits and impact of Flexible and Forward Decision Making (FFDM) with district officials. They needed a framing tool encompassing such an abstract topic that also showed the impact of climate change to fundamentally transform their administrative operations.
Antidote worked closely with facilitators and climate researchers at the Red Cross Climate Center to determine what makes a decision “flexible” and who has the most agency to create flexible decisions.
Based on a series of tests in New York City and London, we created a workshop-facilitated experience highlighting the types of decisions that were more flexible in regards to a changing climate.
Officers of Otago originally created for Uganda, but was so successful it was eventually used in many other countries.
Antidote was invited to train Red Cross facilitators in Vietnam in play and run sessions of Officers of Otago, and a translated version of the game was integrated into outreach methods all across the country.
Here is a video from the first implementation of Officers of Otago in 2013.
In this 5 minutes video, officials and community leaders explain how the game has raised their awareness on the importance of developing cross sectoral projects, keep options for the unexpected and develop long term solutions.